Speaker 1: My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro
Speaker 1: American student organization in the country, fighting for the future
Speaker 1: of our republic. My call is to fight evil and
Speaker 1: to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you
Speaker 1: is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But
Speaker 1: if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end
Speaker 1: up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You got to
Speaker 1: stop sending your kids to college. You should get married
Speaker 1: as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
Speaker 1: Go start at turning point, you would say, college chapter.
Speaker 1: Go start at turning point, you say high school chapter.
Speaker 1: Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign
Speaker 1: up and become an activist. I gave my life to
Speaker 1: the Lord in fifth grade, most important decision I ever
Speaker 1: made in my life.
Speaker 2: And I encourage you to do the same.
Speaker 1: Here I am Lord, Use me. Buckle up, everybody, Here
Speaker 1: we go. The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by
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Speaker 2: Without further ado, the Great Michael Knowles. I'm so much
Speaker 2: to see you.
Speaker 1: How are you.
Speaker 2: Michael, you're always looking so dapper. Stop it, get out.
Speaker 3: You're gonna flattery will get you somewhere.
Speaker 2: It will get you.
Speaker 3: So I did have this thought, I said yesterday I
Speaker 3: was on the main stage, you know, so I had
Speaker 3: to have my more official Republican blue suit, red tie,
Speaker 3: you know, But I said, this is more the casual death.
Speaker 3: It is a purple I like to call it aubergine,
Speaker 3: but it is purple in fact.
Speaker 2: All right, so your boss said some crazy stuff last night.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know who'll put together the calendar,
Speaker 3: the schedule of events. But look, I said, okay, Charlie
Speaker 3: actually did that.
Speaker 2: It's actually this is this is Charlie special I get
Speaker 2: Opening night is basically that's right right toward the top.
Speaker 3: We got Ben and we got Tucker and I looked
Speaker 3: at so here I am right in the middle. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like being in the middle of India and Pakistan,
Speaker 3: in the middle of Iran in Iraq. But it was
Speaker 3: funny too, because the point of my speech was to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: what did Charlie do. Charlie did a million things. We
Speaker 3: were just talking about this backstage. Charlie did a million things, right,
Speaker 3: He debated at the top levels, he fundraised at the
Speaker 3: top levels. He did, he organized, he campaigned, he did this,
Speaker 3: that and the other, wrote books, right, but the distinctive
Speaker 3: thing that he did was build and maintain coalitions, often
Speaker 3: thanklessly behind the scenes, mediating, negotiating, sorting things out, keeping
Speaker 3: some people out, you're too kind, keeping people in, even
Speaker 3: people in who hate each other's guts, and you know,
Speaker 3: always moving forward toward a goal. So I get up
Speaker 3: there and I say, you know, I think my thesis
Speaker 3: is going to be blessed or the peacemakers. This is
Speaker 3: Charlie's distinctive quality. We need to emulate this leoh yeah,
Speaker 3: and then and then what happens, No one agrees with me,
Speaker 3: and everyone starts to throw an elbow the whole night.
Speaker 2: Okay, well never mind, I'll be over the bar. Listened.
Speaker 2: The audience liked Russell Brand's prayer and his whole thing
Speaker 2: last night, right you guys, Yeah, they didn't have his
Speaker 2: high marks for you. But that's okay, that's why you're here.
Speaker 2: That's why you're here.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad that you had Russell come in, because
Speaker 3: you know, it opens up. Erica gives her beautiful speech
Speaker 3: then Ben just starts throwing elbows everywhere, and I said,
Speaker 3: hold on, and then you know Tucker is going to
Speaker 3: be punching back at Ben, and I said, I really
Speaker 3: need Russell to come their shirt button down to the navel.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know, talking about some kind of hippet.
Speaker 3: It was great, it was really it was a nice
Speaker 3: palette cleanser, it really it was.
Speaker 2: The evening went well. But then of course the headlines
Speaker 2: were maga civil war, Maga mayhem. They were like looking
Speaker 2: for all the m words they could they could put
Speaker 2: the Daily Mail in a headline. So what do you
Speaker 2: make of that? What is this? Is this healthy? Is
Speaker 2: this destructive? Is this?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: What do you make of it? When you think of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six?
Speaker 3: So look, you know, I mean my speech last night
Speaker 3: was contrary to maybe some of the other ones, which
Speaker 3: is that I think it's very important to recognize it.
Speaker 3: There's a coalition Charlie built. And maybe you like that
Speaker 3: he invited some people. Maybe you wish he didn't invite
Speaker 3: some people in. Maybe you wish he invited people in
Speaker 3: that he excluded. I don't know, I don't really care.
Speaker 3: He built a team. This is the team. This is
Speaker 3: the army. Okay, everyone here, all of you, this massive
Speaker 3: gathering of people on the stage and more off the stage.
Speaker 3: You're on the team, okay. And so the team has
Speaker 3: a purpose, the team has a goal, and you got
Speaker 3: to move down the field and you got to win.
Speaker 3: And the losers make policy. The winners make policy, and
Speaker 3: the losers go home. So my view is, we don't
Speaker 3: want to paper over our differences. We're in a period
Speaker 3: of extreme flux right now. Obviously we're coming to the
Speaker 3: end of the Trump era. Trump has dominated, he's been
Speaker 3: the big dog for ten years. The air apparent, obviously
Speaker 3: is JD. Vans. So whenever there's a transition like that,
Speaker 3: there's going to be a big shift, and all the
Speaker 3: differences in the factions that have existed for decades are
Speaker 3: to come out, and people are going to buy for
Speaker 3: position in their view. My view is we should try
Speaker 3: to work those out in a way that is productive,
Speaker 3: that offers grace to people. That because if you take
Speaker 3: the infighting to its extreme and you say, look, give
Speaker 3: me what I want or I'm taking my ball and
Speaker 3: going home, well then we lose, you know, and then
Speaker 3: the left wins, and I guess One of my very
Speaker 3: practical points in that speech is the left makes no
Speaker 3: distinction between any of those people on the stage, okay,
Speaker 3: and they will go after us all together. So we
Speaker 3: have to win. This is an insight from Charlie that
Speaker 3: you don't always get from pundits, because it's easy to
Speaker 3: have an opinion, and opinions are interesting, and especially some
Speaker 3: of the drama online is really interesting and titillating. But
Speaker 3: Charlie wanted to win, and Charlie did win, and Charlie
Speaker 3: like kept winning, and Charlie insisted upon not just having
Speaker 3: this great Trump era but getting the next guy in
Speaker 3: and building on that and building and so that even
Speaker 3: these conferences would go from a thousand people or I
Speaker 3: don't like fifty people to a thousand people, to five
Speaker 3: thousand people, to fifteen thousand people to now whatever, thirty
Speaker 3: thousand plus. It's just completely had capacity.
Speaker 2: We need it.
Speaker 4: We need a bigger convention, We need a bigger convention center.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, And so I just think you have
Speaker 3: to keep the focus on winning, not yes, sort out
Speaker 3: your differences, have your fun debate club, but really, you know,
Speaker 3: work those issues.
Speaker 2: But when you know, what's crazy to me is when
Speaker 2: I see like eighteen year old Charlie, you know, like
Speaker 2: on Neil Cavudo or it's like local Chicago News and
Speaker 2: he's like, you know, we've got fifteen Chaptists and he's
Speaker 2: got the Chicago accent.
Speaker 5: He's like, and we're going to build an institution and
Speaker 5: it's gonna be you know, se Al Capone. It blows
Speaker 5: my mind this first Neil Cavudo where he was like,
Speaker 5: we've been having tremendous success on Twitter and it's been
Speaker 5: and I'm like, this is It's like the guy was
Speaker 5: just so ahead of it. He was always driven that
Speaker 5: way and you know, so it's to your point though,
Speaker 5: it's like I want to, you know, talk about this coalition.
Speaker 2: We did a thing before you out on here, but
Speaker 2: you should see it again. And uh, for the folks
Speaker 2: at home, just take my word for it. So who
Speaker 2: last night appreciated the Ben Shapiro approach, hands up your
Speaker 2: glasses a little more than half the room, And who
Speaker 2: appreciated the Tucker Carlson approach half the room? It yeah,
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty. So if you wonder why Charlie constructed
Speaker 2: an opening night the way.
Speaker 3: He did, hey, hold on, you left one who appreciated
Speaker 3: the Michael Noles approach.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the whole room.
Speaker 3: That's a look at that. Yeah yeah, thank you even
Speaker 3: get a whoop in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, but when we talk about what we are dealing with,
Speaker 2: you mentioned that this stuff had been simmering under the
Speaker 2: surface for years. I mean, you could go back to
Speaker 2: Buckley and the Birchers, and it's like some of this
Speaker 2: stuff is his old as time and it's not going
Speaker 2: to go away.
Speaker 3: Go back to Roosevelt and Taft. I mean, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, you can keep going.
Speaker 2: But when we talk about where this goes and kind
Speaker 2: of a sifting, a settling, hopefully we come back together
Speaker 2: these you don't expect necessarily some of the fault lines
Speaker 2: to go away.
Speaker 3: Yes, Look, I think Ben made a very important point
Speaker 3: that I think most people would agree with, which is
Speaker 3: a political coalition has to have boundaries. Not everyone gets
Speaker 3: to come in, just like not everyone gets to come
Speaker 3: into the country, Not everyone gets to come into the coalition.
Speaker 3: So that in principle is true where a lot of
Speaker 3: the Civil War is going to take places. What they're
Speaker 3: going to say, you need to adopt my economic policy
Speaker 3: or you're not a true conservative. You need to adopt
Speaker 3: my migration policy, my foreign policy, or you're not a
Speaker 3: true conservative. That's where those battles have been taking place,
Speaker 3: going back to the fifties, into the nineties, after the
Speaker 3: Cold War, and in the two thousands and to the present.
Speaker 3: I think that's BS. And here's my proof that that's BS.
Speaker 3: The Republican Party now, I guess, supports tariffs, though some
Speaker 3: people in the coalition hate that. Previously, for most of
Speaker 3: my lifetime, the Republican Party hated tariffs. But you know
Speaker 3: what's kind of funny. The Republican Party was founded on tariffs.
Speaker 3: It's like a ram Lincoln said, give me a tariff,
Speaker 3: I'll give you the greatest country in the world. Does
Speaker 3: that mean, therefore, that we have to support tariffs at
Speaker 3: any given time or during the I don't know. The
Speaker 3: Actually Reagan kind of like tariffs too, but the Reaganites
Speaker 3: hated tariffs. Does that mean we have to hate tariffs
Speaker 3: to be a true concert No, because politics involves applying
Speaker 3: eternal principles to constantly changing circumstances. We used to be
Speaker 3: the party of foreign policy restraint and then we you know,
Speaker 3: like bomb the whole Middle East, and now we're the
Speaker 3: Party of restraint. Again, does that tell us some eternal
Speaker 3: fact about the party? I don't think so. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's hypocrisy, for instance, to change your economic views
Speaker 3: to some degree to meet new circumstances. A generation that
Speaker 3: now can afford housing, a generation that's being priced out
Speaker 3: of food. Both issues, by the way, tied to mass migration,
Speaker 3: which was cheered on by Conservatives after the Conservatives opposed it.
Speaker 3: So no, you can change these things. That's called being responsive.
Speaker 3: Not being responsive is what caused the Left to get
Speaker 3: completely blown out of the water in the last election,
Speaker 3: because they were so detached from reality that they thought
Speaker 3: boys could be girls and and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3: We have to be responsive, But I do think there
Speaker 3: are some non negotiables. So one non negotiable, I would say,
Speaker 3: and I think Charlie was so clear about this. If
Speaker 3: you advocate injustice, if you are cruel, if you promote
Speaker 3: a vulgar hatred on the basis of race or sex
Speaker 3: or religion, you're off the team. You know, it's that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff is wrong in itself and it's politically toxic.
Speaker 3: And I thought, I thought Charlie has done a great
Speaker 3: job of keeping that riff raff out After that, things
Speaker 3: are kind of up for grabs. So what you know,
Speaker 3: what are the what are the what are the low bar?
Speaker 3: What are the yes that's the low bar of exclusion?
Speaker 3: What are the things that we affirmatively have to believe in.
Speaker 3: I think you have to love the country. Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: you have to. You have to be like Trump and
Speaker 3: hug the American flag. Which was was that the cover
Speaker 3: of the Maga Doctrine by Charlie Kirk was that I
Speaker 3: seem to remember that when Trump hugged the flag. I
Speaker 3: love that. Some people thought it was weird or cheesy
Speaker 3: or something. No, I thought that was so genuine. This
Speaker 3: guy loves the flag. So if you're the kind of
Speaker 3: person who doesn't love the country, he wants to fundamentally
Speaker 3: transform the country, to use Obama's words, wants to burn
Speaker 3: the symbol of the country, you're off my team.
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Speaker 3: Forward slash Charlie, Uh, what else do you You have
Speaker 3: to believe? There's a real thing as an American people,
Speaker 3: and people assimilate into that, just as Ruth assimilates into
Speaker 3: the Israelites and is in the genealogy of Christ. But
Speaker 3: there's still Israelites. Okay, there's still, uh, there's still particular nations,
Speaker 3: there's still an American people. If you don't believe that,
Speaker 3: if you think America is like just an idea or
Speaker 3: not an idea, like every idea floating and outter. If
Speaker 3: you think it's nothing, you're not on the team to me.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got to really defend the real American people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we accept there's a few, maybe a tiny
Speaker 4: number of things that you just exclude on you have ideas.
Speaker 4: We have that clash between Ben and Tucker last night.
Speaker 4: Do you believe that they have the same assumptions about
Speaker 4: those same core things or is that in conflict at
Speaker 4: all between.
Speaker 3: Them about about what what the core nature of a
Speaker 3: conservative part in America should be. No, they riotously disagree
Speaker 3: on a number of issues. What's kind of funny though,
Speaker 3: As I was listening to their speeches, Ben adopts a
Speaker 3: more classically liberal approach, and Tucker's response and defense also
Speaker 3: took a classically liberal approach. He said, we should judge
Speaker 3: people as individuals. There should be no restrictions on free speech.
Speaker 3: And I had this kind of funny thought, which is,
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm exactly mediating between these two guys,
Speaker 3: because if we debated those fundamental premises, they would probably agree,
Speaker 3: and I would disagree with them.
Speaker 2: You know, there are ways in which you'd be like, so,
Speaker 2: Pat Buchanan said Russell Kirk.
Speaker 3: Definitely, yeah, yeah, And so no, they riotously disagree on
Speaker 3: foreign policy, on economic policy, and they probably agree on immigration,
Speaker 3: I guess, But no, they disagree. And I think those
Speaker 3: debates are good. The debates that actually focus on real
Speaker 3: policy challenges. I think that is good and productive and healthy. Look,
Speaker 3: and both of these guys can codemned the thing that
Speaker 3: I also condemned anything that gets down to, uh, you know, injustice,
Speaker 3: hatreds animosities based on race or religion or whatever. You know,
Speaker 3: I think that that is so ugly and counterproductive that that,
Speaker 3: you know that stop.
Speaker 2: Stopped trying to bait me into the Catholic debate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to quote Arthur's, the deepest prejudice in American
Speaker 3: history is anti Catholicism. But you know, we don't have
Speaker 3: to get into it.
Speaker 2: So so I'm gonna I'm gonna put you on the
Speaker 2: spot here just a little bit.
Speaker 3: You know, you've never done that.
Speaker 2: They only ask three or four piercing follow up questions.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. Yeah, I mean, listen, you exist at
Speaker 2: a company that's been at the sort of you know,
Speaker 2: with Ben obviously he's Jewish, there's been a lot turns out.
Speaker 2: I saw the yamaka myself. I did, and did you
Speaker 2: touch it?
Speaker 3: Though I did?
Speaker 2: I know better than so, you know, this is the
Speaker 2: open question. I was recently on the Ross Stautit podcast
Speaker 2: New York Times. Had a great time, really great guy.
Speaker 2: I love, good interviewer, and you know, he kept trying
Speaker 2: to get me to go into the Israel debate. And
Speaker 2: my perspective, well, who cares about that? You're on the show,
Speaker 2: tell us what is your perspective about what? You know,
Speaker 2: we're talking about coalitions. What did you do with Israel?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Israel has been one of the dividing lines, especially
Speaker 3: for the online right, I think less so for the
Speaker 3: broader public right, but especially for the online right, especially
Speaker 3: for the young right. And I think it's perfectly reasonable
Speaker 3: that that would come up after this massive GDZ of war,
Speaker 3: not only the realities of that war, but also the
Speaker 3: propaganda from both sides of that war that was you know,
Speaker 3: but especially anti Israel propaganda. That is a real thing. Obviously,
Speaker 3: it happens in war. So what do we do? I
Speaker 3: guess I hosted a debate on this actually yesterday on
Speaker 3: my show, which is should America continue to support Israel?
Speaker 3: And I guess you have to get even more particular
Speaker 3: than that. My position on the Gaza war was that
Speaker 3: the war had to wrap up. That you know, we
Speaker 3: have a long standing affection for Israel. Richard Nixon famously
Speaker 3: saved Israel. Israel would have been destroyed in seventy three,
Speaker 3: but he saved Israel. We have I think we have
Speaker 3: more culturally and politically in common with with Israel than
Speaker 3: with Israel's enemies, and so I think there is a
Speaker 3: there is a reason. It's not a deceit, it's not
Speaker 3: just a fraud. There is a reason that we tend
Speaker 3: to look more favorably on Israel than on some of
Speaker 3: Israel's enemies. But it can go too far. I mean,
Speaker 3: when some people say that we have a religious demand
Speaker 3: that we must, you know, support the nation's state of
Speaker 3: Israel and all things, I think that's kind of crazy.
Speaker 3: When people say that the Nation of Israel is the
Speaker 3: greatest ally that America's ever had, I don't see any
Speaker 3: evidence of that you know, it can be a good ally,
Speaker 3: but that's such an extreme statement that we must always
Speaker 3: you know, stand with Israel, that you know, we need
Speaker 3: Israel more than Israel needs Some people have said all
Speaker 3: these things. I think that's just taking the argument too
Speaker 3: far and it turns people off. Now, on the flip
Speaker 3: side of that, when people, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like when people realize that feminism is wrong and they
Speaker 3: become misogynists for a period just out of their contrarian nature.
Speaker 3: You know, to recognize that the relationship with Israel is
Speaker 3: complex and there are reasons to support Israel, but there
Speaker 3: are obviously limits around. That is not to say that
Speaker 3: we need to start wearing the gefeas in marching with
Speaker 3: Greta Thunberg. Okay, it's not to say that, you know, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: I know what we can do. We can form a
Speaker 3: Christian Islamic alliance and that will lead to a period
Speaker 3: of world peace. I have about fourteen hundred years of history.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much time we have on the
Speaker 3: show today, but about fourteen hundred years history to say
Speaker 3: that's probably not going to work. And of course, the
Speaker 3: migrant crisis in Europe into a lesser degree in America
Speaker 3: is being driven in no small part by the unassimilability
Speaker 3: of Islam. So how do we deal with Israel? I
Speaker 3: thought that Trump's approach to this was quite right, which
Speaker 3: is that, look, you just want the war to end,
Speaker 3: you want to have some peace and stability in the region.
Speaker 3: And what it would be best for the American right
Speaker 3: is not to pick you know, all or nothing on Israel,
Speaker 3: but for the importance of Israel to diminish in the
Speaker 3: minds of right wing voters. It just shouldn't be the
Speaker 3: top issue. I think for most people, maybe for anybody. Uh,
Speaker 3: that would be my answer. That's a people are going
Speaker 3: to call that a moderate answer or an unsatisfying answer,
Speaker 3: because it's either we need to be chanting from the
Speaker 3: river to the sea, you know, the Arabs will be free,
Speaker 3: or we need to all put on yamaka's or something.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to do I don't want to
Speaker 3: put on a kefia. I don't want to put on
Speaker 3: a yamaka. I want to recognize long standing alliances and
Speaker 3: be prudent about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's a thing Charlie would talk about that.
Speaker 4: It's just it would be a very dumb thing to
Speaker 4: destroy the Conservative coalition over our attitude towards what is
Speaker 4: ultimately a foreign country. Yeah, and just for most people,
Speaker 4: that is not what matters in your life nearly as
Speaker 4: much as the economy, whether you can have a family,
Speaker 4: whether you own a home, what our immigration policy is.
Speaker 4: And it's sort of a touch grass thing. Get get
Speaker 4: offline a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean that the notion gosh. I mean,
Speaker 3: I have had people kind of young, very online people,
Speaker 3: but they'll come up to me in public. I'll be
Speaker 3: in a cigar shop, I'll what do you think of Israel?
Speaker 3: I don't think about Israel all that much. If I'm
Speaker 3: being totally frank about it. But if you want my
Speaker 3: really boring, dry answer, here you go. You know, here's
Speaker 3: here are the recollections of Richard Nixon. Does that work
Speaker 3: for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, you know what, I think we do a
Speaker 2: disservice to that debate by framing it in a binary yeah,
Speaker 2: that you either have to be four or against And
Speaker 2: it's like, well, I like them better than the other guys. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, Charlie was raging against the Islamification of the West.
Speaker 2: I mean, I am very sympathetic that the fact that
Speaker 2: they are surrounded on all sides by people that have
Speaker 2: oftentimes a very hostile ideology towards them and want them dead. Really,
Speaker 2: but you know, there's I think if we presented more
Speaker 2: options on the menu that were you know, that we
Speaker 2: gave young people say hey, you don't have to hate
Speaker 2: these people, you don't have to be anti these people.
Speaker 2: You don't have to rage against them or scapegoat them
Speaker 2: or create in them as a boogeyman. That will you know,
Speaker 2: there's the root of all evils in the world, that
Speaker 2: there are other options on the table if we simply
Speaker 2: presented that. But I think what is happening is that
Speaker 2: you have an older generation that does think in terms
Speaker 2: of the binary, and they're not really open to that debate.
Speaker 2: And I think what's happening is you're seeing that ripped
Speaker 2: and wretched open and now we can finally have that
Speaker 2: debate and not you know, yeah, you know, I know
Speaker 2: it's all Charlie wanted.
Speaker 3: Actually, yes, I think in some ways, the way I
Speaker 3: think about this is it probably puts me on the
Speaker 3: outs with it. Right, I'm in a bad position right
Speaker 3: now for the online right. I'm gonn upset everybody for
Speaker 3: two reasons, in particular on these issues, because I really
Speaker 3: like Jews and I really like Indians, and the Internet
Speaker 3: tells me I have to hate Indians and Jews for
Speaker 3: some reason. I don't know. Indians have got thrown into this,
Speaker 3: but I but I really have an h one.
Speaker 2: I got thrown in yet.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking this. I'm not even joking. I
Speaker 3: was thinking this the other day when I was eating
Speaker 3: a Pastramian mustard sandwich on rye. I was thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: I really like the Jews. I say that, but I
Speaker 3: don't like once. I'm sure you've seen all of these debates,
Speaker 3: these questions. They say, are you as Zionist? And I say, well,
Speaker 3: like literally, I'm not because I don't agree with the
Speaker 3: historical or religious claims of Zionism. Because I'm a Catholic.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm an American Catholic, like I don't. I just have
Speaker 3: a different view of religion. And so if the claim is,
Speaker 3: you know, true religion tells us that this particular nation
Speaker 3: has an eternal right to this particular plot of dust,
Speaker 3: I would just say not, I don't really buy that.
Speaker 3: I kind of take the king bald when option. But
Speaker 3: that's not really on the table right now, and.
Speaker 2: The Protestants in the room are really upset about you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: rights are in the Bible. That's fine.
Speaker 3: But so there's that. But but and then there's the
Speaker 3: historical argument. Well, you know, the Jews were here for
Speaker 3: a long time two thousand years ago, and so they
Speaker 3: should be here again. And I think, well, by that
Speaker 3: same argument, we should turn over the Black Hills to
Speaker 3: the Lakota sue. But I'm not giving them Mount Rushmore,
Speaker 3: you know, so don't we don't accept that logic in
Speaker 3: other contexts, And so I literally don't with that. But
Speaker 3: I also think the Jews. The Jewish nation came about
Speaker 3: because the British Empire, which controlled that territory, made a
Speaker 3: promise to them to give it to them, and then
Speaker 3: the United Nations voted to recognize their nation, and then
Speaker 3: on top of that, they fought a war of independence
Speaker 3: and conquest to take that area. So by like every
Speaker 3: single standard of modern nation states, Israel as a legitimate
Speaker 3: nation state. And so I say, so I support it
Speaker 3: in that way, and I have an affection for the Jews.
Speaker 3: You know, Sorry that my answer isn't terribly ideological, but
Speaker 3: I think The way to deal with this issue, especially
Speaker 3: as the fracture is the right, is to stop being
Speaker 3: so freaking ideological about it. I hate ideology. I think
Speaker 3: conservatism in many ways is an anti ideology.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We prefer the the real to the utopian. We prefer
Speaker 3: a present laughter to utopian bliss, you know, the limited
Speaker 3: to the unbounded. This is all all the kind of
Speaker 3: conservatism of Michael Oakshot and other other right wing thinkers.
Speaker 3: So I just think, like, yeah, let's get down to
Speaker 3: brass tacks. What's your real issue with Israel? You don't
Speaker 3: want the warre and Goza to go on. I agree, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm glad that wrapped up. Good job Trump, you know
Speaker 3: that was great. We have alliances with all sorts of
Speaker 3: nations in the world. They're complicated and we navigate them
Speaker 3: and yeah, okay, anything else? Can I have my PISTROMI now?
Speaker 3: Is that fine?
Speaker 2: We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries and
Speaker 2: today I want to point you to their podcast. It's
Speaker 2: called Culture and Christianity, The Alan Jackson Podcast. What makes
Speaker 2: it unique is Pastor Allan's biblical perspective. He takes the
Speaker 2: truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're
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Speaker 2: the problems in every episode, he gives practical things we
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Speaker 1: Each episode will make you recognize the power of your
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Speaker 1: and encouraging. You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or
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Speaker 1: you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working
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Speaker 1: at Alan Jackson dot com. Forward slash Charlie.
Speaker 4: We're on a pretty tight schedule here, so I think
Speaker 4: we want to get to some questions from people and
Speaker 4: we can get hopefully two, three, four of them.
Speaker 6: Yep, Emma, Hi, guys, good praying for you a lot.
Speaker 6: Keep doing what you're doing. My dad was born in Tehran, Iran,
Speaker 6: and he came here in nineteen seventy seven to escape
Speaker 6: the revolution that happened. When Trump banned Muslims, he was
Speaker 6: one of the first people to say that it was
Speaker 6: a good thing for the country. And his thing was
Speaker 6: to say, why can't he Why couldn't we not ask
Speaker 6: if they're going to care love the country first over Islam.
Speaker 6: And I think that that seems to be something that
Speaker 6: people are not realizing. My dad is still a Muslim.
Speaker 6: I was saved by Jesus Christ nine years ago, and
Speaker 6: his parents were both Muslim and an atheist, and in
Speaker 6: hospice accepted Jesus Christ. So he can save any of you.
Speaker 6: I was an atheist for twenty four years and Jesus
Speaker 6: can change our life. So I think putting Jesus first
Speaker 6: is the answer. But with this stuff with immigration, we're
Speaker 6: seeing such an awful thing happen, and not everyone over
Speaker 6: there is bad. My dad's proof of that. He's come.
Speaker 6: He's a Muslim and he's assimilated, learned English and started
Speaker 6: a business. So how can we educate people on the
Speaker 6: horrors that can happen if we ignore this threat.
Speaker 3: I think speaking to Muslims and ex Muslims, but even
Speaker 3: current kind of moderate Muslims is a good way to
Speaker 3: do it. I'm not surprised to hear that your family
Speaker 3: left after the revolution in Iran, because if you want
Speaker 3: to hear the most trenchant critics of Iran, the people
Speaker 3: who most desperately want to just light up that country
Speaker 3: and blow up the Malas, it is Iranians who left
Speaker 3: around the revolution. It's so beautiful to hear of your
Speaker 3: conversion story. You're so right about that. You know, a
Speaker 3: friend of mine, a Jewish friend of mine, recently converted.
Speaker 3: I said, wow, what did it? Was it? He's very intelligent.
Speaker 3: I said, was it this argument or this argument this?
Speaker 3: He said, no, I had a mystical experience of Christ,
Speaker 3: So noh, that'll do it. Yeah, that'll probably do it.
Speaker 3: And and then even I spoke to it an ex
Speaker 3: Muslim who is who is also converted. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think hearing those practical stories this again, this gets
Speaker 3: back to what we were just talking about. You know,
Speaker 3: abstraction serves some purpose to clarify things, but when you
Speaker 3: really want to get down into the brass tacks of politics,
Speaker 3: which you said, practical art, you got to get into
Speaker 3: real examples. You know, talk to the real people, talk
Speaker 3: to the real people who fled Iran, talk to real
Speaker 3: Muslims and ex Muslims.
Speaker 2: That's going to.
Speaker 3: Clarify things a lot more.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting too, is you know seeing Trump
Speaker 2: go through the UH, you know, the Saudi the tour
Speaker 2: through the Middle East, and so many of those countries
Speaker 2: are have done incredible amounts of labor and work politically, militarily,
Speaker 2: domestically to limit the reach of jihadism, of radical Islam,
Speaker 2: and so you know the fact that we are playing
Speaker 2: fast and loose with immigration from that region of the world.
Speaker 2: Here's my thing. You know, Charlie was always very clear
Speaker 2: about making it macro versus micro Islam. Yeah, on the
Speaker 2: micro level, there's good Muslims there. They're wonderful people. There
Speaker 2: will be a great neighbors that work hard, be good citizens.
Speaker 3: Love shwarma. Yeah, I love Pastramian, I love shwarma. Does
Speaker 3: that make me a moderate?
Speaker 2: You're starting to sound like Piers Morgan hurry, Yeah, which
Speaker 2: is English, by the way. But one last thing here, though,
Speaker 2: is that my point with UH importing Islam is that
Speaker 2: you might say you import ten thousand of them, you
Speaker 2: just need one that gets radicalized and then goes and
Speaker 2: drives through a market or you know, detonates a device
Speaker 2: or something like that. And my point is the more
Speaker 2: you bring in, the more you're going to have of
Speaker 2: that necessary. We have seen this now historic play out,
Speaker 2: So why play why play flat fast and loose with
Speaker 2: it at all? You know, And you said put christ first.
Speaker 2: I'm on the team of we should probably do that
Speaker 2: with immigration too. Just so yeah, I mean this. We
Speaker 2: assimilate Christians in this country very well. Why don't we
Speaker 2: just start there?
Speaker 3: I mean this, by the way, this goes back to
Speaker 3: the founding. John Adams wrote this to Thomas Jefferson that
Speaker 3: the principles of Christianity are the principles on which the
Speaker 3: revolution was one. John Jay writes this in the Federalist Papers.
Speaker 3: He says, a thank God for the providence that we
Speaker 3: come from a common people, with a common experience of
Speaker 3: the revolution, with a common religion. And so it's not
Speaker 3: that we you know, Washington writes this letter to the Jews.
Speaker 3: He doesn't write a letter to the she heites. I noticed,
Speaker 3: but he writes a letter to the Jews. And we
Speaker 3: do have a a They even tolerated some Catholics every
Speaker 3: now and again. Obviously we have a history of toleration,
Speaker 3: but you know, we got to be practical about it.
Speaker 3: A little bit of spice flavors the melting pot, but
Speaker 3: you don't want to pour in whatever that Somali dish
Speaker 3: that Jacob Priye tried to choke down the other day.
Speaker 4: Let's got another question or two here.
Speaker 2: Over there. Hi, Michael, my name is Brody. I'm sixteen.
Speaker 1: My mom and I wanted to know what you were
Speaker 1: doing when you were sixteen and what advice you had
Speaker 1: for someone that might want to get into politics when
Speaker 1: they're older.
Speaker 3: A great question. I was a political junkie as a kid,
Speaker 3: going back to when I was six actually even earlier.
Speaker 3: I remember the Bob Dole election in nineteen ninety. I
Speaker 3: was like the I was the most excited about Bob
Speaker 3: Dole winning, including Bob Dole, and so I did so.
Speaker 3: I was into that. I was doing student government, class president,
Speaker 3: all that stuff when I was sixteen. I was also
Speaker 3: smoking cigars. I started doing that at fifteen. I'm not recommending.
Speaker 3: I'm not not recommending, but I'm not Legally I'm not
Speaker 3: allowed to recommend.
Speaker 2: But contractually you only got one company pitch for your cigar.
Speaker 3: Yes, everyone else I got to say for yeah, but
Speaker 3: I was typically engaged, and I would recommend starting in
Speaker 3: those small and local ways. The great counterexample to this is,
Speaker 3: of course, our pal Charlie, who decided that he was
Speaker 3: going to be on the fast tracked to president.
Speaker 2: And he got involved in local campaigning in Chicago a lot.
Speaker 2: And so I totally agree with you on that.
Speaker 3: You've got to start a little local, And I would
Speaker 3: recommend not getting famous at sixteen. I think there's a
Speaker 3: real impulse, especially for zumers who are raised on the internet,
Speaker 3: basically weaned on TikTok. You don't want to get famous
Speaker 3: before you really formed, before you really have something to
Speaker 3: say and to do. So, I would recommend, on the
Speaker 3: one hand, get that practical experience that you can't get
Speaker 3: from books, out of student government, school board elections, maybe
Speaker 3: even a congressional helping out, interning or something. But then
Speaker 3: also read, immerse yourself in history and political philosophy, and
Speaker 3: really take the opportunity to be a kid, albeit a
Speaker 3: precocious kid, and to have a real education that's going
Speaker 3: to set you up in a much stronger way. To
Speaker 3: be than seriously involved in politics, and then you're not
Speaker 3: running for class president. Maybe you're running for president president.
Speaker 3: I know it stinks. I think we only have time
Speaker 3: for one more.
Speaker 2: Probably we have five minutes.
Speaker 4: All right, well let's get another one. Let's see how
Speaker 4: fast it goes.
Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Katie.
Speaker 7: I have the honor of serving as president of our
Speaker 7: Turning Point chapter at the University of Cincinnati. I would
Speaker 7: thank you. I would love your advice on two issues
Speaker 7: I'm seeing. First, we have a lot of students who
Speaker 7: want to get involved but are afraid and that stops
Speaker 7: them from coming to meetings. And second, we have a
Speaker 7: ton of students who want to know so much more
Speaker 7: about Christ, but they don't want to talk about that
Speaker 7: nearly as much as they want to talk about politics.
Speaker 7: So how can I best reach both of these groups?
Speaker 3: You guys run Turning Point. I just show up every
Speaker 3: now and again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you take that.
Speaker 3: Showed up for you though, That's fair enough. Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 3: I would say you should embrace the fact that they
Speaker 3: are drawn to these two things and not even push
Speaker 3: against the fact that they find politics more titillating. Maybe
Speaker 3: recognize that politics has something to say about religion, and
Speaker 3: religion certainly has something to say about politics. There has
Speaker 3: been an impulse in American Christianity for a long time
Speaker 3: to try to divorce the two and to say the
Speaker 3: politics is icky and we shouldn't play with it. And
Speaker 3: you know, Christianity is something totally different. You know, Christ
Speaker 3: is incarnate in history. That's what we're about to commemorate.
Speaker 3: He'll he'll return again, by the way, in the second Coming.
Speaker 3: And he is born into an empire. And that's significant
Speaker 3: because he's born into the Roman Empire, which claims the
Speaker 3: right to tax the whole world, which is a recognition
Speaker 3: that the civil authority has jurisdiction over the whole world,
Speaker 3: which means that the passion and the crucifixion of Christ
Speaker 3: saves the whole world. Know, the historical and the political
Speaker 3: tells us something about the religious truth and vice versa.
Speaker 3: And of course Saint Paul tells us the civil authority
Speaker 3: is therefore our own good is given by God and
Speaker 3: doesn't bear the sword in vain. So I would just say,
Speaker 3: don't try to split them apart, or say you want
Speaker 3: to talk about politics, that's only talking about religion. Maybe
Speaker 3: recognize that this is an integral hol because Christ is
Speaker 3: the God not just of your church or some other church.
Speaker 3: He's the God of the whole cosmos, which means he's
Speaker 3: even the god politics.
Speaker 4: I think, I think we have time for one more.
Speaker 2: Okay, I just want to add one other point to
Speaker 2: this is that Charlie became an expert at integrating his
Speaker 2: faith into political answers. But he started by being able
Speaker 2: to give you a political answer to any political question
Speaker 2: without without bringing in politics. So he spent a long
Speaker 2: time sharpening his arguments without politics at all, and then
Speaker 2: as he got older, he started just just incorporating them.
Speaker 2: But you get really good at the logic with or
Speaker 2: without this first thing, I would say, And then you know,
Speaker 2: to Michael's point, it's like politics can be the door
Speaker 2: doorway in. But Charlie used to always say that those
Speaker 2: who drink from the streams of liberty will eventually find
Speaker 2: its source. We believe that's Christ. And so you may
Speaker 2: not know the order through which which door they're going
Speaker 2: to walk in first, and just be open, listen to
Speaker 2: the spirit, prayerfully, and you'll get there.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, two minutes we have two minutestes.
Speaker 2: Fast question be real quick.
Speaker 8: Hi guys, my name is Jamie. I'm from the state
Speaker 8: of California. I don't know if I should be two
Speaker 8: old of that, but beautiful state. It is a beautiful state.
Speaker 8: My family and I were so blessed to be here
Speaker 8: last year in this room. Actually we saw the great
Speaker 8: back and forth, the friendly banter that Michael, you and
Speaker 8: Charlie had last year about Catholicism and Christianity, and that
Speaker 8: brings me to I came with my family, Like I said,
Speaker 8: I have my eleven year old and my thirteen year
Speaker 8: old here. They were here last year as well, and
Speaker 8: my question for you is they've My thirteen year old
Speaker 8: will be going into high school next year. We've prayed
Speaker 8: on it a lot. Unfortunately it's it's kind of out
Speaker 8: of our scope right now to put him in a
Speaker 8: private high school. So he will be going into a
Speaker 8: public school next year. He's been in private school from
Speaker 8: kindergarten through eighth grade. So I wanted to ask the
Speaker 8: three you really words of encouragement, words of wisdom that
Speaker 8: you can give to just not just my son. We
Speaker 8: actually brought five kids with us, ranging from seven year
Speaker 8: olds at thirteen. Now we're talking, so would love to
Speaker 8: hear what you guys have for them.
Speaker 3: Thank you. First, how many kids did you say?
Speaker 8: Five?
Speaker 2: Five?
Speaker 3: So Mormon, Catholic, or Orthodox Jews.
Speaker 8: We're actually here with three families. The four it's me
Speaker 8: and my husband and my eleven year old and thirteen
Speaker 8: year old are here for the second time. We actually
Speaker 8: brought two other families with us this year that we're
Speaker 8: so excited just to really hear of what Charlie left
Speaker 8: and I saw, I will say this in this room,
Speaker 8: the words of wisdom with Charlie I'm gonna get I
Speaker 8: saw at firsthand the impact that Charlie had on these kids. Yeah,
Speaker 8: my eleven year old came up to be the night
Speaker 8: that he was shot and he put his head in
Speaker 8: my lap when Erica was speaking, and he's like, why
Speaker 8: did this happen? So I just want to say that
Speaker 8: we missed Charlie so much and I got to meet Daisy.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for what you've done. So anyway,
Speaker 8: I didn't expect to cry, but we just it's happy.
Speaker 8: We know Charlie's here, we feel his presence. But anything
Speaker 8: you guys can give us on closing out, especially to
Speaker 8: these this young youth that really is looking for some
Speaker 8: words of wisdom.
Speaker 3: Well, I would say on the very practical school point,
Speaker 3: you know, happily you've given your kid a great formation,
Speaker 3: you know, and even like with William F. Buckley Junior,
Speaker 3: great American Conservative, he was homeschooled through eighth grade. You know,
Speaker 3: he had that and then he went to whatever other school.
Speaker 3: And so you really that's the formation that period right
Speaker 3: up until the teenage years. If you've done such a
Speaker 3: great job of making that really solid that I think
Speaker 3: you can have reasonable confidence that the teachers won't screw
Speaker 3: it up too much in the public school. But you
Speaker 3: have to keep an eye I would say, you have
Speaker 3: to keep a real eye on it. The reason homeschooling
Speaker 3: spiked during COVID is because kids went home, they looked
Speaker 3: at what their teachers. The parents looked at what the
Speaker 3: teachers were telling the kids over the computer screen, and
Speaker 3: they yanked their kids out of schools because they said,
Speaker 3: this is insane and it's poisoning. So you have to
Speaker 3: be very responsive to that. It sounds though from your
Speaker 3: story about Charlie, obviously all of us are you know,
Speaker 3: this is a big one. This is the last event
Speaker 3: that you or really directly left us that dawned on
Speaker 3: me yesterday was coming in here, and you know his
Speaker 3: pictures all over and you know, yeah, this is a
Speaker 3: this is a particular America. It's always growing, it's always big,
Speaker 3: it's always spirit filled, and this one in particular. So
Speaker 3: we're all kind of uh working through that a little
Speaker 3: bit and uh, you know, living that. The fact that
Speaker 3: your kid would have that reaction to this event tells
Speaker 3: you he he's in a good spot. I think he's
Speaker 3: going to be all right now.
Speaker 4: We still have a lot of of course, if they
Speaker 4: want encouragement on the other practical things. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of videos of Charlie arguing with liberals and and I
Speaker 4: guess because people like that. To close on a pedantic
Speaker 4: religious point, are would they be allowed to pray for
Speaker 4: Charlie's intercession on their behalf or is that not allowed
Speaker 4: unless he's.
Speaker 3: Not formally canonized yet? Although there was a bishop who
Speaker 3: I forget which bishop it was, who said that Charlie
Speaker 3: was almost certainly a martyr, a marder for the faith
Speaker 3: though though he's not the pope, And I guess we'll
Speaker 3: have to save the pope debate for the next the
Speaker 3: next one.
Speaker 2: Everybody Michael Knowles.
Speaker 3: Thank you, everybody, thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: For more on many of these stories and news you
Speaker 3: can trust, go to Charliekirk dot com