The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - My Latest Appearance on the Charlie Kirk Show - Charlie's Legacy (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_898)

00:00:00.000 I'm so honored to have our next guest here, Dr. Gad Saad, who is a great friend of the show,

00:00:06.920 has been a great friend to Charlie Kirk. He is also a scholar. I want to get this title right

00:00:13.700 because he has actually a new wonderful title. Dr. Gad Saad, scholar at the Declaration of

00:00:21.500 Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at University of Mississippi. He's also

00:00:26.920 the author of a bunch of amazing books, The Parasitic Mind. He's working on a new one. I

00:00:30.540 want to talk to him about that. Dr. Saad, welcome to The Charlie Kirk Show, and thank you for making

00:00:35.480 the time. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Cheers. Yeah. Well, Dr. Saad, I want to let you

00:00:41.720 start where I think it makes sense most, and that is we haven't had you back on the show since

00:00:48.360 Charlie was taken from us on September 10th, and I just want to give you a chance to reflect on

00:00:54.740 what this last month and plus has meant to you, and just let you reflect on what a loss we've all

00:01:01.920 suffered. I mean, I sort of oscillated from sadness to anger. Only maybe, I think it was maybe a month

00:01:13.120 prior to the tragic day I had appeared on the show with Charlie, and I've told the story before,

00:01:21.660 but it's worth repeating here. You know, I've spoken to many wonderful people, you know, throughout my

00:01:27.660 professional career, many of whom have come on my show. I mean, really, really top people. My daughter,

00:01:33.100 who's 16 years old, never asked for me to introduce her to anybody. When I was appearing on Charlie's show

00:01:40.780 this last time, she came home excitedly and said, could you please just introduce me to Charlie? And so

00:01:47.240 that kind of gives you a sense. I'm 61 years old and a fan of Charlie, and my 16-year-old is a fan

00:01:54.040 of Charlie. So it is an immeasurable tragedy, but here we are promoting his legacy, so hopefully he

00:02:01.880 lives on in all our hearts and minds. And Dr. Saad, maybe that's the next best place to start is,

00:02:09.420 you know, you talk about his legacy. I don't typically throw this question out to people, but

00:02:15.400 you are a public intellectual. You are a great thinker. You have a way of distilling ideas. What

00:02:21.800 is Charlie's legacy in your mind, and what do you hope that it will grow into?

00:02:28.360 You know, there are several ways by which I could answer this question. I'll take a stab at one or two

00:02:33.540 ways. Number one, you know, in chapter, in the last chapter of the parasitic mind, I ask people to

00:02:39.500 activate their inner honey badger. And I use that terminology because the honey badger has been

00:02:45.440 officially classified as the most fierce animal in the animal kingdom. Now, I don't mean when I say

00:02:53.120 activate your inner honey badger for you to be violently ferocious, but it means, you know, get off

00:02:58.740 the couch and do big things, stand tall. And Charlie was not only physically tall at six foot four, but

00:03:05.620 he was a tall honey badger in that at 18 years old, when most of us are worried about how we're going

00:03:13.340 to get through the next day, as you know, with teenage angst, he starts off something that is

00:03:19.180 absolutely impossible that most people in their 80s wouldn't dare start. And so, first of all, the fact

00:03:26.500 that he had the chutzpah, right, which is a Yiddish word for sort of existential gall, the fact that he

00:03:31.960 had the confidence to say at 18 years old, I'm not going to university, I've got better ways to be able

00:03:37.880 to contribute to the cause, is something that we could all cherish and be inspired by. But then the

00:03:44.460 fact that he was able to cater to the young people, to get involved, to get excited, so that my daughter

00:03:50.640 is not asking me to introduce her to Elon Musk, but is asking me to introduce her to Charlie Kirk,

00:03:58.060 that says everything you need to hear about his legacy. He is a unique individual in that he had

00:04:03.900 the intellect, he had the political ability to organize, he had the warmth, right, he always has

00:04:11.320 a smile, even when he's engaging in difficult debates, he's warm, he's engaging, so he's an

00:04:18.820 immeasurable loss, truly, one-in-a-generation type of fellow.

00:04:23.340 Yeah, absolutely, a giant of our generation, but his memory and his legacy will live on,

00:04:30.100 and we're committed at Turning Point on the show, to growing it, to expanding it as best we can,

00:04:35.340 and the outpouring of love and support that we've seen, both at the show, but at the students on

00:04:40.700 campuses, has been truly, truly wonderful and heartening to see. Now, Dr. Saad, we are going to

00:04:47.580 get into some news of the day with you, because you have a way of making sense of the chaos,

00:04:52.160 unlike few can, but I do want to pick up on something we touched on in the previous hour,

00:04:57.300 and that is the rise of Islam. It's something you and Charlie talked a lot about, and I just want

00:05:02.900 to play one clip from a conversation that you had with Charlie on this show, 290.

00:05:07.860 What would you said, the West is a woman to be mounted, that is the Islamic creed? 0.99

00:05:12.460 Yes, I would repeatedly hear from Arabic-speaking, Muslim-speaking immigrants, 0.71

00:05:18.700 in this case it was in Canada, always say that the West is a woman to be mounted. And what the

00:05:26.760 reflex that that captures is that all of the virtues that we think as laudable in the West,

00:05:33.620 compassion, magnanimity, generosity, empathy, are heard as weakness, weakness, weakness,

00:05:43.320 and weakness by cultures that don't necessarily share our infinite largesse. And so it's exactly

00:05:50.580 what they're saying, West is weak, it's a woman, therefore you mount.

00:05:54.440 Yeah, powerful stuff. And we've seen those clips go viral, where you can actually hear

00:06:01.960 them in their own words say, the West is a woman to be mounted. I think the clip that I've seen 0.94

00:06:06.740 was from the UK, a place that Charlie visited relatively recently before, I mean, soon before

00:06:13.420 the tragic events of September 10th happened. And so he saw it up close, and you had zeroed in on

00:06:19.100 this idea of suicidal empathy, this, this, it's almost a, an opening that both the left and Islam 0.93

00:06:26.900 were exploiting. Exactly. Maybe I could give you a quick synopsis of the framework of suicidal empathy.

00:06:35.080 Many people have wrongly presumed that what I mean by suicidal empathy is that empathy is a bad thing.

00:06:43.740 Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. We are a social species, and therefore,

00:06:49.100 it makes perfect evolutionary sense that, that empathy would be part of our repertoire of

00:06:54.500 possible strategies, right? For you and I to have a meaningful conversation, I need to put myself

00:07:00.360 in your mind, and vice versa. That's called theory of mind, which is part of cognitive empathy.

00:07:06.780 Autistic children, for example, fail a theory of mind test. This is how we diagnose them as being

00:07:12.900 autistic. So empathy, when properly modulated to the right targets in the right situations

00:07:19.920 in the right amounts, is a perfectly relevant and appropriate evolutionary response. The problem

00:07:27.360 arises, as is the case with many psychiatric disorders, when you have a dysregulation of this

00:07:33.100 otherwise beneficial virtue, right? So for example, laughter is great, right? It has medicinal properties,

00:07:40.540 but then you could have pseudo-balbar effect, what the Joker in the movie had, where he,

00:07:46.080 because of abuse, he starts laughing uncontrollably in wrong situations, or the way Kamala Harris can

00:07:53.440 cackle the way that she does. That becomes an inappropriate form of laughter. And so suicidal empathy

00:07:59.480 takes this beautiful virtue, and then because it becomes dysregulated, it becomes hyperactive,

00:08:06.480 and it targets the wrong targets, leads to the demise of the West. And unless we get rid of this

00:08:13.200 reflex really quickly, I can assure you that the West will fall. It might take five years, it might take

00:08:19.220 50 years, or it might take 500 years, but it will fall the way many other societies have.

00:08:26.020 Yeah, no, that's really well said. I, you know, and I, I think of basically what MAGA is, what

00:08:31.380 conservatism has transformed into, in large part, thanks to President Trump, but also to Charlie

00:08:37.000 Kirk and others, is that it now has a muscularness to it. It has, it has a backbone, it has a fighting

00:08:43.000 chance. Ultimately, that's why the left hates it so much, because it's effective, because it is the,

00:08:47.820 it is the anti-vend, it is the counteraction to what the left has been doing in this country

00:08:53.200 since, essentially, post-World War II, in the, the invasion, the, the, the move in our institutions,

00:09:01.240 the long march through the institutions of progressivism, of liberalism, in a negative

00:09:06.200 sense, obviously, in that second sense, in the second word. But yeah, this is the, this is the

00:09:10.400 anti-venom of what we've, what we're doing at MAGA, what we're doing in the conservative movement

00:09:14.140 and President Trump. That's why the fight is so intense. I want to share with the audience a little

00:09:18.760 bit of breaking news right now. President Trump has just concluded his call with Vladimir Putin.

00:09:26.520 They've been on a very long call. And it looks like he's saying that they have agreed to send

00:09:31.900 high, high ranking delegates led by Marco Rubio to meet. And then they are going to, after that meeting

00:09:39.900 with high level advisors, the United States will be meeting or President Trump will be meeting with

00:09:45.700 Putin in Budapest. So President Trump hot off the heels of getting peace in the Middle East is now

00:09:54.400 going to be meeting with President Putin in the near term. So hopefully we can get that as he calls

00:09:59.120 it, inglorious war between Russia and Ukraine brought to an end. He is going to be meeting with

00:10:03.640 President Zelensky tomorrow here in Washington, DC. So Jack, that feels like a good time to throw to

00:10:10.560 you. Yes. Yeah, you are. You do have a bit of a feel for Eastern Europe as well as war analysis in

00:10:20.900 general. Yeah, no, I mean, look, I've traveled to the war a couple weeks after it started in back in

00:10:27.940 March of 2022, which is in May of 2022. I've been to Budapest a few times. I was at the Anchorage

00:10:35.400 meeting. I accompanied the president's delegation as a new media member there aboard Air Force One

00:10:40.980 when he met with Putin just in Alaska, just a few weeks ago in Alaska. So I was in the room with

00:10:46.500 himself, Putin, Lavrov, all the rest. And what can I say? It looks like I'm going to Budapest.

00:10:51.760 Oh, wow. There you go. Dr. Saad, and we'll keep Jack involved. And I want to make sure we're working

00:10:58.660 you in, Jack, here. No, no, please. But Dr. Saad, maybe comment really quickly. We've been told that

00:11:04.160 American leadership on the world stage was coming to an end, that Trump was going to ruin America's

00:11:08.920 standing in the world. And yet here he is pulling off win after win after win, achieving peace.

00:11:14.500 Tie that into what it means for the West, that America's leadership is strong and robust and we're

00:11:20.760 leading the way. Look, to go back to our earlier conversation where many Muslims say the West is a 1.00

00:11:28.140 woman to be mounted. President Trump lives in the real world where he actually understands human

00:11:35.480 nature. He may not call himself an evolutionary psychologist, but he is an evolutionary psychologist

00:11:41.140 because throughout his long and successful life, he's had to deal with many people, whether it be in

00:11:47.300 his real estate life or in his TV life, where his ability to succeed in those forums stems from his

00:11:54.720 understanding of human nature. And so having people like Joe Biden and the others, super sweet and

00:12:03.340 kind and empathetic diplomats who cross their legs like Justin Trudeau might look nice because you

00:12:09.100 could show off your really colorful socks, but that's not what really nasty folks around the world 1.00

00:12:15.220 respect, right? So I come from the Middle East. In the Middle East, we have the creed,

00:12:21.720 right? Might is right. Or as you probably, of course, know the old term, you know, if you wish to have

00:12:27.860 peace, prepare for war. There are endless, you know, military dictums that speak to the fact that

00:12:34.380 it's nice to have a velvet glove while you're shaking someone's hands, but make sure that behind your back

00:12:42.180 you have a really big stick, right? As you also know, speak softly, but carry a big stick, right?

00:12:48.700 So all of these maxims exist throughout history because the world doesn't exist in a utopia,

00:12:56.460 in a democratic progressive utopia. It exists in the real world where people respect might.

00:13:03.700 And Donald Trump exemplifies that. That's why you're seeing win after win.

00:13:08.540 Well, Dr. Saad, you know, you're reminding me of something you said on the show with Charlie years

00:13:14.200 ago. I remember it very clearly because we were at Berkeley and he was about to do a campus stop at

00:13:21.960 Berkeley and a tabling stop there. And we had to do the show. So we set up, you know, in some back

00:13:30.360 room, we set up a kind of a mobile studio in some back room at Berkeley. And you guys were talking about

00:13:36.880 gender ideology and the transing of youth and this things, but it, but it relates to this conversation

00:13:42.260 to the line you used and he stole it. I don't know that he always gave you attribution, but I remember

00:13:47.340 hearing it and going, oh, that's a good line. I texted you. He's like, oh, totally. It's great.

00:13:51.480 But you said the, the pesky shackles of reality, the pesky shackles of reality, these things like you

00:13:58.840 might think you can fly, but you're going to jump off a building and find out really quick that gravity

00:14:02.700 still pulls you down. You might think that the rules of nature, nature's God don't apply to you,

00:14:08.180 but just test nature's God and find out. So, so I, I love that because you, you, you are a realist.

00:14:14.680 Trump is a pragmatist and he knows that the vile monsters on the stage, it's better to work with

00:14:20.460 them. It's better to have them fear you and respect you than to be cowed by them. Dr. Sad,

00:14:24.920 I'm a little upset at Jack right now because Jack spilled the news that I spilled coffee.

00:14:31.000 It's not all that's being spilled around here. Yeah. And then now you're spilling tea,

00:14:34.660 coffee, all the things. But, but listen, I love this because, well, I don't love the coffee spill.

00:14:41.460 There's like memes being made. I warned him about the Keurig. I said, we got a bum Keurig in here

00:14:46.740 and he did not heed my warning. I have my coffee right here. By the way, I have a, I have a bone to

00:14:52.860 pick with both of you. I don't like to be on a show where the hosts are both extremely good looking.

00:14:58.740 It's pissing me off. No, you know, it's, you know,

00:15:01.860 come back when Blake is here then. Blake is a handsome man. We're going to get him married.

00:15:07.200 Anyways, here, here's, here's what's funny is we have teams that clip the show and like some of

00:15:13.020 them are connected with us and there are staff and others, they're just kind of come in and out.

00:15:17.900 One of those ones that just come in and out, uh, was basically told me this morning that Jack

00:15:22.880 looks much better than me. And I said, okay, that's fine. That's a weird observation.

00:15:27.900 Do you do pushups this morning? I did not do my pushups this morning. I woke up early to get to

00:15:31.760 the Fox. That's what he didn't do his pushups this morning. So you know what I love here though,

00:15:35.860 Dr. Sad is that you and Jack Posobiec are on a show together. I think, um, you and, you and Jack

00:15:40.280 have disagreed on, on minor, honestly, very minor things in the past, but in the, in this post era,

00:15:45.960 uh, of this post Charlie era, we all have to come together. And I love that. And, and, you know,

00:15:52.540 I, I feel like if you look at the, the metal ceremony, Dr. Sad, you had all these Fox hosts,

00:15:57.620 you had, uh, senators and congressmen that don't always see eye to eye coming together to celebrate

00:16:02.400 Charlie. And, uh, so I'm just glad this moment is happening. And, uh, Jack, I don't know if you

00:16:06.920 want to, well, no, I actually, the, the question that I had and, and, uh, honestly it was, you know,

00:16:12.220 really to kind of pick your brain because you, you have such a good theory of mind of the left

00:16:16.820 and such a good theory of mind of, of you have this ability to really get into what makes them

00:16:21.780 tick. And one of the things that we've all been grappling with here, Dr. Sad is this, this idea

00:16:26.660 that there was this kid, Tyler Robinson, a, an ex-Mormon or comes from a Mormon family would

00:16:34.000 then find himself on a roof hundreds of miles away from where he lives in a relationship with

00:16:41.000 a trans boyfriend. So a biological male who was transitioning to a female, and then somehow

00:16:47.320 thinks he's defending his boyfriend by, and again, allegedly, legally speaking, pulling

00:16:53.760 a trigger and shooting Charlie Kirk. And I wonder at all, if you could possibly attempt to unpack

00:16:59.240 that twisted psychology for us. Yeah. Thank you for that question. Uh, so I thought, I don't

00:17:05.140 know if you guys have heard me discuss, uh, the difference between deontological ethics

00:17:10.500 and consequentialist ethics. So it might be worth repeating it here, even if some of the

00:17:14.840 viewers might be familiar with it. Deontological ethics are absolute statements. So for example,

00:17:19.520 if I say it is never okay to lie, that would be a deontological statement. If I were to say

00:17:25.440 it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings, I would be engaging in consequentialism. And of course,

00:17:31.920 for many things in life, we are all consequentialists. I always joke, although I'm being serious,

00:17:36.520 that if you wish to have a long, happy marriage, if you hear the following question, do I look fat

00:17:41.780 in those jeans? Very quickly put on your consequentialist hat. And even if you have to

00:17:46.560 slightly lie, you're doing it because you love your spouse and you don't want to hurt her feelings.

00:17:51.400 So that's perfectly fine. But when it comes to certain foundational principles that certainly

00:17:56.600 define the unique American experience, presumption of innocence in the courtroom, freedom of speech,

00:18:03.560 freedom of inquiry, those things cannot be consequentialist principles, right? So if I say,

00:18:09.960 I believe in freedom of speech, but not if you marginalize a particular group, then I'm succumbing

00:18:15.680 to consequentialism. So to now wrap that up to your question, I think what this, uh, the, the,

00:18:21.400 the alleged assassin has done is he's drank from the Kool-Aid of the pool of consequentialism,

00:18:27.820 which basically says Charlie Kirk is such a dangerous guy that the deontological principle

00:18:34.340 of freedom of speech and exchange of ideas no longer applies to Charlie Kirk. He is saying

00:18:40.320 words that are akin to violence. So if I stand on that rooftop and take him out, boy, I should be

00:18:47.440 lauded as a hero rather than be put in prison. So that's what makes consequentialism so dangerous.

00:18:55.300 And so in, in his mind, it's almost like he, he feels as though he's, he's defending, uh, his,

00:19:01.140 his boyfriend, his lover. Um, again, we don't know all the specific details there, but I'm just,

00:19:06.680 just going off of what we've seen. And, and, and it's, it's a complete, you know, you talk about this,

00:19:12.120 the, um, talk suicidal, toxic empathy. It seems like it's almost that suicidal empathy,

00:19:16.680 but in, in the person of one individual here. Well, exactly. That's why 30 seconds. So suicidal

00:19:23.600 empathy is targeting the wrong targets, right? We love the Hamas fighters, but we have no empathy

00:19:29.940 for the Jews. So there is no empathy for Charlie Kirk and his right to speak freely. There is only

00:19:35.380 empathy for the trans community. Right. Or his wife, his children, his friends, and everyone else.

00:19:42.660 And so we are back with Dr. Gad Saad, who is a scholar at the university of Mississippi. So you,

00:19:52.180 you, you, you are, you know, you just love in the South now, huh? Dr. Saad.

00:19:56.320 Oh, I gotta tell you, I am the only thing that I'm lacking to be a full Southerner

00:20:01.320 is that I grotesquely lack in height. Now, if you want to feel like your self-esteem is,

00:20:09.580 is going to take a hit, if you're six feet tall in the South, you're rather height challenged. And so

00:20:16.120 the only complaint I have about Mississippi thus far is that everyone is over six foot four when I am

00:20:23.980 merely the height of Lionel Messi. So I'm struggling with those ego issues, but otherwise I am loving the

00:20:31.000 South. I am immersed in the South. Love the place.

00:20:35.500 Well, I mean, you just got to get that accent too, Dr. Saad. We're going to, we're going to wait for

00:20:39.720 that. Y'all, y'all. Have you, have you picked, have you picked an SEC team yet? That's the real,

00:20:45.200 that's the real, you know, the college football. You've got to, there you go. All right. I'll miss.

00:20:49.880 There it is. See, he's in. So I'm going to play a clip for you, Dr. Saad. I went to this

00:20:55.060 News Nation town hall last, I got put in, I got put in a panel with this Midas touch kid.

00:21:01.560 I'd never met him before. He seemed very nice. As soon as we got on stage, it was, he was coming.

00:21:06.940 He wanted his clip. He wanted his viral clip. Sure enough, he's supposed to run. The left seems to

00:21:11.160 love it because I'm not disavowing the New York Republicans. I have no idea about the context of

00:21:16.080 them. My position on disavowing the New York young Republicans is that when, listen, the Democrat

00:21:21.700 party gets to a point where they want to call Jay Jones to pull out of the race and they disavow him

00:21:28.060 by actually disavowing him and saying they denounce the, uh, anybody that would run for the top cop

00:21:33.040 in the state of Virginia that would fetishize murdering his political opponents, which obviously

00:21:37.860 is an issue very near and dear to me. Anyways, this is, uh, this is a clip, uh, 274. Political violence

00:21:44.500 overwhelmingly comes from the right. These mass shootings come from the right. My dear friend was just

00:21:49.680 killed by left-wing violence, assassinated in cold blood. There has been how many ice facilities that

00:21:54.380 have been targeted? What about George Floyd? What about the, that, that whole summer of looting and

00:21:59.300 rioting? Listen, but there is a justification for political violence. It shows up in every poll and

00:22:05.280 it's coming from progressives. And of course, there is this poll that I was thinking about in my head.

00:22:14.400 Uh, go ahead and throw up image 31. This was from September 12th through the 15th. So just in the

00:22:20.520 immediate aftermath of Charlie's murder. And it shows that almost 30% of liberals that are

00:22:27.020 self-described liberals between the ages of 18 and 39 justify political violence. You see that blue

00:22:33.420 dot over on the left side of your, of the, of the screen. It is an outlier of outliers. Dr. Sad.

00:22:39.680 Your thoughts. And by the way, this perfectly, uh, segues into what we discussed earlier with

00:22:46.300 deontological versus consequentialist. This is exactly consequentialism. It is per, I'm speaking

00:22:51.780 now, if I were one of the progressives, it is perfectly fine to engage in political violence

00:22:57.460 when you are facing the existential threat of Orange Himmler, Donald Trump, and so on. Right?

00:23:02.860 So again, look, I don't know if you remember in 1960, the Mossad had, uh, identified where Adolf 0.95

00:23:11.160 Eichmann was hiding and he was in Argentina and they could have easily put a bullet in his head

00:23:17.340 to, you know, met out justice, but they wanted to stay true to the deontological principle, which is

00:23:23.940 that even someone like Adolf Eichmann deserves his day in court. So they ended up at great personal

00:23:31.520 cost or risk and great diplomatic risk, try to get him out of Argentina so that he could have his day

00:23:39.520 in court in Israel. Of course, eventually he was found guilty and was hung, but that shows you

00:23:46.860 the difference between what the left does. And in this case, what Israel did, which is

00:23:51.640 even Eichmann deserves his day in court. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's, that's, uh, it's a fascinating

00:24:00.380 insight. Dr. Sad, uh, you know, listen, I think my, my, my belief here is that of course we want to

00:24:08.360 get to a point of political unity, unanimity on the issue of political violence, but in order to get

00:24:14.680 there, we have to confront a very unfortunate truth in this country. And that is that there is one side

00:24:21.080 of the political aisle that has begun to justify. And you put it beautifully. What the rationale or the,

00:24:27.480 the philosophical under under things of why, but they, but that is the truth that we must confront

00:24:32.680 that they have completely abandoned the liberal values of a constitutional republic of open debate,

00:24:37.560 open dialogue, the very values that Charlie himself espoused and championed. And I, we cannot forget

00:24:44.520 that the assassin on these bullets had Bella Chow had, uh, catch fascist, uh, Hey, fascist catch,

00:24:52.120 uh, on, on the bullet casings. This is, this is a, he may not have been a card carrying member of,

00:24:57.080 of Antifa, but he was certainly inspired by them. You had a question for Dr. Sad. Dr. Sad. So,

00:25:03.320 you know, we've identified this it's, it's spreading. You've talked about it as if it's a parasite,

00:25:09.560 which, which continues, but we're also talking about anti-venom. We're also talking about potential

00:25:15.640 cures. Is there a way to reach people who, and again, but perhaps not so that are, um, some that

00:25:24.280 are so far gone that they would pull the trigger themselves. But we also saw in the wake of Charlie's

00:25:28.760 murder thousands upon thousands of people taking to social media, celebrating, clapping,

00:25:35.960 cheering this on. And these were not card carrying members of Antifa. These were people in positions

00:25:41.400 of authority there. You saw you have pilots, you had doctors, nurses, HR departments, uh,

00:25:48.040 all over the place where people seem to share in this belief. Is there any way to kind of break them

00:25:55.320 out of this? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And one that I struggle with often

00:26:00.840 when I'm trying to decide whether to engage someone in terms of whether I could flip them,

00:26:06.680 if I could administer the mind vaccine to them or not. And it's not always obvious that your,

00:26:11.560 your time is not going to be wasted on some people, but I do think, and maybe here I'm being naively

00:26:17.800 optimistic. I do think that with enough showing of the evidence, uh, people can come around,

00:26:25.080 but it takes a lot of dogged efforts. So for example, I had a person who in 2010, I had had a

00:26:32.200 very, very difficult email exchange with, well, it took her 14 years, but then last year she came around

00:26:40.280 and said, Oh boy, I wish I could have listened to you back in 2010. Uh, she was one of those super

00:26:47.160 progressive liberal Jews who was very upset that I was saying some detrimental things about Islam

00:26:54.680 because her friend is a Muslim woman and she's very peaceful and kind and empathetic. And I was,

00:27:00.600 you know, not adding to the ecosystem of love by spreading hateful things about Islam and so on.

00:27:06.120 Well, 14 years later, she said, oops, I guess I was wrong. So I'd like to think that with enough

00:27:12.360 evidence, people can potentially be reached, but here's where I'm going to hit you with the

00:27:17.320 counterpoint that's slightly more pessimistic. I was recently asked on a show by a British

00:27:22.840 psychiatrist. What is the singular thing that has most surprised me about human nature in all

00:27:28.520 the years that I've studied human behavior? And I don't think you're going to be happy to hear this.

00:27:33.080 I said the difficulty to get someone to change their opinions once they are fully anchored.

00:27:39.320 So it takes a Herculean effort, but hopefully we're all up for the challenge.

00:27:45.320 Well, that's exactly why we were devoting so much, and we are devoting so much of our

00:27:49.720 energies, Dr. Saad, to ensuring that these high school chapters get off the ground. I will never

00:27:54.440 forget, we were in Aspen a couple weeks before we were having a retreat for donors of Turning Point

00:28:02.680 USA. And Charlie was working on the presentation the night before he was going to present it to everybody.

00:28:07.240 And his vision was very clear. He wanted a Club America after in every high school in the country.

00:28:14.680 And, you know, getting to students before they get completely ideologically brainwashed

00:28:22.040 at the university, universities where Dr. Saad is not a professor, of course, is critical.

00:28:28.200 Obviously, the university chapters are critical as well. But you do see this. It's very interesting.

00:28:35.240 I'm learning something with this clip, correct? Because this gentleman from Midas Touch,

00:28:42.520 his name's Adam, I guess, he is clipping it for his audience and his audience loves it because I

00:28:47.080 refuse to disavow the New York Republicans, young Republicans.

00:28:51.160 Well, they also talked over you. You didn't have a chance. I didn't get a chance. I basically said,

00:28:55.000 listen, I'm willing to have a conversation about it. But until you tell me that you're willing to

00:28:59.800 disavow the John, what? Jay Jones, gosh, Jay Jones, two J's. Jay Jones, attorney general candidate,

00:29:09.000 Democrat in the state of Virginia. You're thinking of John James in Michigan, who we like.

00:29:11.880 Jay Jones. So until you're willing to actually tell him he needs to drop out of the race,

00:29:16.440 then listen, we're going to be at an impasse here. I'm willing to have a conversation about

00:29:20.360 some of the things that were said. I don't agree with some of the things that were said. I don't

00:29:23.240 understand the context of them. But this is what's funny. We are in this hyper-polarized

00:29:28.040 environment because I have never gotten so many compliments from people about my performance last

00:29:33.160 night saying, based, you know, way to go, way not to, way not to, you know, they were proud of me for

00:29:37.560 not doing the disavow ritual on stage with Chris Cuomo and this Midas Touch kid, because that's what he

00:29:43.320 wanted. He wanted this clip to be able to put it on social media. There was no civil dialogue. There

00:29:47.880 was none of this. And it does raise an interesting point about, you know, social media. I'm being told

00:29:53.320 by authorities a lot of this stuff happens on gamer chats, right? This is a lot of this radicalization

00:29:58.760 fully anchoring into these ideas happening on these, these discord chats and things like this. So what is

00:30:05.640 the solution when it comes to the fact that we are just living in completely different algorithms,

00:30:09.960 where we seem to be getting further apart because of the machines?

00:30:14.440 Yeah, well, I mean, I try to do my part in terms of reaching the young people at the university

00:30:21.080 level. But I think what made, you know, to your original question about Charlie's legacy,

00:30:26.760 the fact that he's able to reach me, I mean, nobody wants to listen to, you know, a 61 year old 0.91

00:30:31.960 professor with gray hair, but people want kids want to listen to Charlie, right? Because he seems

00:30:37.000 only slightly older than him. And his brilliance is actually, I mean, it really needs to be

00:30:42.760 highlighted. Let me draw an analogy. When I teach consumer psychology, and I explain to the students

00:30:48.120 that we can't sell chewing gum to 10 year olds, because they don't yet have the cognitive apparatus

00:30:56.200 to fight against the advertising message message that's thrown at them. So that's why all the ideologues

00:31:03.720 try to get to your children early, right? That's why we have, you know, twerking drag queens for 1.00

00:31:09.480 during, you know, reading hour when they're five and six years old, because the ideologues understand

00:31:15.800 that we need to get to the children very early before they have developed the cognitive armory to

00:31:24.200 protect themselves against the nonsense. And so I did my part at the university level. God willing,

00:31:30.040 you guys will be doing it at an earlier age bracket. And hopefully we can administer the

00:31:34.600 mind vaccine globally.

00:31:37.480 Well, and that's a great place place to kind of pivot a little bit. I want to talk about this AOC

00:31:43.160 Bernie Sanders town hall, Dr. Sad. You know, well, they were talking about social media. So let's play

00:31:49.720 this clip 248.

00:31:50.840 Why does Republican messaging on social media seem so much more effective than Democratic messaging?

00:31:57.880 And what can we do about it?

00:31:59.000 Well, that's a great question.

00:32:03.000 I think the Republicans are effective. They have learned a lot about social media. And by the way,

00:32:10.200 it doesn't hurt that they have friends on all of the major social media platforms.

00:32:17.080 Well, that's factually inaccurate. But you know, there is this thought that I've been having,

00:32:23.800 Dr. Sad, is that this reaction that they're resorting to violence. There is this thought

00:32:29.720 that keeps occurring to me, you know, and I said this last night at the town hall, you just need

00:32:33.640 better ideas. I mean, part of the reason that the left is losing the social media battle is because

00:32:40.120 their ideas do not hold up to scrutiny. And once they are allowed to be scrutinized in an equal

00:32:46.600 setting, equal footing, they tend to fall apart. Ours go viral because they're common sense.

00:32:51.320 Yeah. Can I say something about X and Elon, which by the way, the only one, right? We have like

00:32:55.720 X and I guess like a little bit of CBS right now, maybe. I don't know. You know, and Elon didn't

00:33:03.320 come in and start boosting conservatives though. What he did is he came in and he stopped banning

00:33:09.640 conservatives. He stopped censoring conservatives. And he instituted one tier standard for

00:33:16.280 everyone. And then he also instituted community notes and all the rest. And that for some reason

00:33:21.720 to them made them so upset that they all started running over to blue sky. It wasn't in a boost of

00:33:27.240 engagement that Bernie Sanders is saying. It was actually leveling the playing field to an equal

00:33:31.880 standard. And I'll just, yeah, maybe I'll add a point. So it is true, of course, that in the battle

00:33:39.800 of ideas, the conservative ideas, of course, we would all agree are much better than the progressive

00:33:45.000 ones. But I want to introduce a slight cosmetic point that speaks to sort of the virality on social

00:33:51.080 media. In my happiness book, the book after the parasitic mind, I talk about the research, not my

00:33:59.320 own research, but there's unequivocal research that shows that on average, conservative score much

00:34:05.640 higher on happiness than do progressives and liberals. And the research is unequivocal. So

00:34:12.680 that if you look at the reason, by the way, if I can just explain it very quickly, the conservative,

00:34:17.960 I argue, wakes up in the morning, he may not live in a perfect society, but there are things worth

00:34:23.960 conserving. If you are a conservative, by the definition of that term, the progressive wakes up

00:34:30.360 with unbelievable existential angst. I live in a supremacist society, white supremacy, transphobic, 0.93

00:34:36.760 Islamophobic, built on slavery. Therefore, I need to eradicate the current society and around the 1.00

00:34:42.840 corner, there'll be unicornia. So I'm sullen, I'm dour, I'm angry. Look at Bernie Sanders. I mean,

00:34:49.880 he is more scary looking than, you know, the black mamba. Whereas you look at you guys, 1.00

00:34:55.800 you look at all of the beautiful women on Fox, they look happy. They are easy to, on the eyes.

00:35:03.000 And so I think that certainly is an additional element beyond just the quality of ideas that makes

00:35:09.720 people more drawn to some of the leading conservative figures. That's, I think that's a

00:35:16.520 really smart point. I've never actually thought about that, thought about it that way. Doctor said,

00:35:20.120 we live in a state of gratitude and of a sense of, I would say, obligation of duty to conserve the good,

00:35:28.600 the true, and the beautiful, things we're grateful for, things we have joy knowing that they exist.

00:35:34.440 The progressive mind lives in a state of existential dread because they believe the world is not good,

00:35:40.200 true, or beautiful right now, and they want to make it that way. And so they're willing to tear down

00:35:44.200 all the edifices they see as in between them and their utopia that is simply never going to exist on

00:35:49.880 planet earth. And that dichotomy is why you, you liberals tend to wear their dread on their face.

00:35:57.080 Whereas conservatives tend to be happy. We tend to be jovial. And it was funny because

00:36:00.680 I also, I read also kind of like, like, like it's like self-effacing, right? It's like, it's like you,

00:36:05.880 you, you hate yourself. So you look worse. And then it's like, you know what I mean?

00:36:09.720 But it's funny because I, you know, sometimes I would notice on social media in the wake of this

00:36:13.640 tragedy, Dr. Sad, that some people would say, oh, you guys aren't mourning enough. And it's like, okay,

00:36:18.200 first of all, like, that's not true. If you, if you could just see us in private,

00:36:25.720 but secondly, we do not mourn the way the world mourns. I have faith that, that Charlie is

00:36:31.720 staring Jesus in the face and that's our Christian faith. And, and I believe that he is, uh, he was

00:36:37.320 wearing a crown of glory and he's a, he's a martyr for the faith and for the country. I believe that

00:36:41.560 God has a plan. I trust God's plan. I don't understand God's plan. I don't have to like

00:36:47.720 God's plan all the time, at least in my flesh, but I trust it. And there is, there is a sense of,

00:36:53.960 of higher purpose at play that I am willing to, you know, park my emotions in my flesh at the door

00:37:00.040 and trust the Lord. I want to play this other clip, Dr. Sad, because it, it's, again, we're talking

00:37:04.680 about this AOC Bernie town hall, Caroline Levitt's weighing in saying we, we now have the two new

00:37:09.160 leaders of the Democrat party. Tough to argue with that, uh, observation. Uh, but she can't,

00:37:14.280 she really struggles to give Trump credit for his, this peace deal in the Middle East. And I,

00:37:19.320 I want to dive into what that says at a deeper level about our politics in this country. 261.

00:37:25.320 Maybe I'm wrong about the ceasefire in Gaza. Do you believe President Trump deserves credit for that?

00:37:30.280 Well, you know, I find these, there have been several ceasefire announcements and developments

00:37:37.960 that have happened over the past two years. As president Trump was on the plane back to the

00:37:42.440 United States, there's already indications and questions about whether this ceasefire will hold.

00:37:48.360 Do you give him credit? Do you give him credit though, for getting to this point where it did get

00:37:52.920 those 20 hostages back home with their families in this particular development? Yes. But we also know

00:37:59.000 that president Trump, uh, was an obstacle to peace, uh, previously as well.

00:38:06.600 Okay. So he was an obstacle. The whole world celebrated when this happened and everybody said

00:38:15.000 that nobody could do this except for Trump. And yet somehow he is an obstacle. She says, yes,

00:38:19.640 he gets credit, but instantly has to say, oh, but the peace is fragile. Well, of course it's fragile.

00:38:24.760 Dr. Sad, what does this tell us about the state of politics where we can't

00:38:29.000 leave our domestic issues at the shoreline like we used to and sort of present a united front

00:38:35.000 internationally? You know, I thank you for that question because in the way that I'm going to

00:38:40.120 answer it, it shows the power of studying psychology and behavioral science. So here's the answer to

00:38:46.840 your wonderful question. There is a great book by two French cognitive psychologists, uh, by name of

00:38:53.480 Sperber and Mercier. The book is titled The Enigma of Reason, where they argued that our capacity to

00:39:00.840 reason did not evolve in order to achieve some objective truth, but rather it evolved to win arguments. So

00:39:09.800 that even when we are applying our faculty of reasoning, we are doing it in a tribal coalitional

00:39:17.000 manner, right? So it doesn't matter if Andrew convinces me that my position is wrong and therefore I will

00:39:23.320 have the humility to say, thank you for correcting me, Andrew. You're right. And I was wrong. I will

00:39:29.160 double down, triple down forever more because my team can't lose. That's exactly what AOC is showing.

00:39:36.520 She is showing that she's not an honest interlocutor. All that matters is that I don't give credit

00:39:43.720 where credit is due. I can never accept the fact that Trump might have done something

00:39:49.240 that was decent and therefore I'm going to try to avoid giving him the due credit.

00:39:56.840 Jack, anything to add to that? So I suppose, is it possible then that we are able to return to a

00:40:05.480 point in this country where things like being an American are what we see as our tribe. And this

00:40:14.200 is one of the reasons that I think that Trump's defense of the American flag, of fighting against

00:40:20.360 the kneeling during the national anthem during the Super Bowl and NFL games, that if you bring everyone

00:40:28.840 under one umbrella of saying, we're all American citizens, we may have disagreements on our SEC team

00:40:35.480 and our Super Bowl team, or Andrew and I are crosswise because his Dodgers beat my Phillies in the-

00:40:41.800 Three to one. Darn near us. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I remember. Thank you. 0.54

00:40:45.880 You didn't even make it interesting. We had the one. Okay. It was eight to two the one game.

00:40:49.080 Yeah. Anyway, we'd love too many men on base. But the point is we can still all be American. And I

00:40:57.480 think that it's the messing around with those nuts and bolts of the country that have gotten us to

00:41:04.440 this place. One minute left here, what the doctor said.

00:41:07.240 Yeah. Let me give you an example. I recently had on my show Enes Kander Freedom, the former NBA player,

00:41:13.160 right, who retired to play for Boston Celtics, right? Now, this guy's from Muslim background,

00:41:18.680 but I don't care that he's Muslim, even though I don't have nice things to say about Islam, 1.00

00:41:23.000 because he exemplifies the types of immigrants that we want in the United States or in the West.

00:41:28.440 He comes to the United States and says, I want to be, to Jack's point, I want to be united under the

00:41:34.200 common rubric called the United States. I'm Canadian, yet I'm at Ole Miss at a center called the

00:41:40.280 Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom, because I embody and I,

00:41:47.240 I'd like to think I exemplify all of the values of American exceptionalism. So you're exactly spot on,

00:41:53.800 no more hyphenated Americans. If you are American, you believe in our foundational principles,

00:41:59.160 and then welcome in my brother. If you don't, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. 1.00

00:42:03.480 And that is a perfect place to leave it. Dr. Gadsad, a Southerner who's rooting for Ole Miss, 0.99

00:42:12.360 I never thought I'd see the day, but it's glorious. We're all building bridges. We're all building

00:42:17.160 bridges. Post-September 10th, I think it's fitting somehow. Dr. Sad, thank you for so much of your time.

00:42:23.080 All right, Jack shows up next. Don't miss it.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - October 17, 2025

My Latest Appearance on the Charlie Kirk Show - Charlie's Legacy (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_898)

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