On the latest edition of 'Ask Charlie Anything,' he tackles your questions emailed to Freedom@CharliKirk.com like: Was Teddy Roosevelt a bad president as is becoming an increasingly popular position on the right? Why did Donald...
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Teddy Roosevelt Patriotism
00:06:26
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| Hey, everybody. | |
| Today I answer your questions. | |
| It's Monday. | |
| That means I'm answering your questions. | |
| We talk about Jeffrey Epstein, Theodore Roosevelt, and so much more. | |
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| Today is Monday. | |
| That means I am taking your questions at freedom at CharlieKirk.com. | |
| Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. | |
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| Let's get to the first question. | |
| This is from Derek from Massachusetts. | |
| Hey, Charlie, I heard you say to Ben Shapiro that you like Teddy Roosevelt. | |
| I was told that he was an awful progressive president. | |
| Can you please elaborate? | |
| Thanks so much. | |
| Happy to. | |
| Like with all leaders, some historical figures do things we really like, and sometimes they do things that we do not like. | |
| I've always loved Teddy Roosevelt. | |
| Glenn Beck, who's a friend of mine, and I have a lot of respect for Glenn Beck, makes Teddy Roosevelt the most public enemy number one of, and he argues that it is the beginning of the progressive movement. | |
| Ben Shapiro in his book was awfully critical of Teddy Roosevelt. | |
| Teddy Roosevelt, I think, gets an unfair and really bad rap amongst conservatives. | |
| And you actually dive deep into what Teddy Roosevelt believed and why he believed it. | |
| I think that there's a lot to be learned, and there's some things we can disagree with. | |
| But first, kind of going into the history of Teddy Roosevelt, interestingly enough, he was born in New York, Harvard-educated, where he said, quote, I learned nothing of great value of my time at Harvard because Harvard hasn't changed very much in 100 years. | |
| He ended up becoming governor of New York. | |
| But before that, really interesting, Teddy Roosevelt was one of the first advocates of the American police force. | |
| He was the commissioner of the New York Police Department. | |
| The New York City Police Department did a great job. | |
| Huge decrease in New York City crime. | |
| He actually ended up running the Rough Riders, which fought a nice little conflict in Cuba that became very famous. | |
| Teddy Roosevelt was very pragmatic. | |
| He was a man's man. | |
| He was a famous outdoorsman. | |
| He was incredibly politically ambitious. | |
| He loved America. | |
| I just want to make that very clear. | |
| His motives were all about a strong and cohesive America that represented the middle class of our country. | |
| Again, he was very pragmatic. | |
| He was willing to try out new ideas. | |
| He wanted to run for the presidency, wasn't really sure the way to do that, ended up becoming selected for the vice president position for McKinley. | |
| McKinley ends up getting shot, and then Teddy Roosevelt takes over almost the entire term for William McKinley and serves two terms, almost three. | |
| Teddy Roosevelt was best known for his trust-busting, going after the massive companies that were basically running America. | |
| In very strict libertarian circles, they will say that this was an awful overreach of power. | |
| It's a misrepresentation of history to say they were abusing their power. | |
| There might be some truth to that, but the more I've studied it from impartial observers, I think it's fair to say that that mass consolidation of corporate power was a violation of human liberty and freedom in certain parts of the country. | |
| And I think that Teddy Roosevelt generally acted correctly in that sense. | |
| Teddy Roosevelt built our national parks. | |
| This is probably what I think we can learn the most from him. | |
| He was a huge believer in preserving our national treasures of Yosemite National Park, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton National Park, the Glacier National Park, the Dakota Badlands is actually where he got his start as an outdoorsman. | |
| Teddy Roosevelt probably could have ran for a third term and won a third term. | |
| He stepped down because of precedent, something that his distant cousin relative, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, decided not to do, where he was elected to four terms, really only serving three died in his fourth term. | |
| Teddy Roosevelt decided to groom a successor. | |
| He groomed the very large William Howard Taft, big guy, the fattest president in American history, and actually famously got stuck in a bathtub because he was so big. | |
| William Howard Taft changed the direction of the Republican Party from a way that Teddy Roosevelt just didn't like. | |
| Because of that, Teddy Roosevelt felt betrayed, ended up primaring William Howard Taft in that Republican primary, unsuccessfully, then ended up starting the Bull Moose Party. | |
| William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt both then split the Republican vote about 25-25 each, which then elected one of the worst presidents in American history, Woodrow Wilson. | |
| Now, look, Teddy Roosevelt was a complicated figure. | |
| He won a Nobel Peace Prize. | |
| That's a fun cocktail party fact for ending the Russia-Japan war. | |
| I think we can use Teddy Roosevelt as someone who was a patriot first, might have pushed the boundaries of executive power too much for some people, but generally made decisions that were in the best interest of the middle class and the worker and the everyday man. | |
| I'm also a big fan of Dwight T. Eisenhower. | |
|
Chicago Violence Crisis
00:07:47
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| We've talked about that in a previous episode of the Charlie Kirk Show. | |
| We can dive into that more. | |
| Next question: Charlie, what are your thoughts on President Trump's recent announcement that he will be sending a surge of troops into cities like Chicago to combat growing violence? | |
| Is this the right move? | |
| Jeff from Indiana. | |
| Well, hi, Jeff. | |
| Well, first of all, my home city is Chicago. | |
| I am proud to be from Chicago. | |
| Look, violence in Chicago has been out of control for an incredibly long period of time. | |
| So I'm from Chicago. | |
| Let's just have a little update in Chicago. | |
| In July so far, there have been 75 people shot and killed in Chicago, 357 people shot and wounded, 432 people total shot, and 85 total homicides. | |
| Just in the last week, just in the last six days, 13 shot and killed, 66 shot and wounded, 79 total shot, and 14 homicides. | |
| And so far in 2020, 383 shot and killed, 1,767 shot and wounded, 2,150 total shot with 426 homicides. | |
| A person is shot in Chicago every two hours and 16 minutes, and a person is murdered in Chicago every 11 hours and 28 minutes. | |
| So to say that Chicago is going in the right direction would be a complete and total misrepresentation of the data. | |
| The average age of a shooting victim in Chicago is 29.2 years old, and the average race is unfortunately black, and most of the people doing the shooting are black on black crimes. | |
| So look, Chicago has long been a center of violence, a center of destruction and blood in the streets. | |
| I fully support President Trump bringing in the troops to quell this conflict. | |
| 77% of all the victims that die in Chicago are black every single year. | |
| So, first, I want to start with Lori Lightfoot, who's an imbecile. | |
| She's a complete and total imbecile. | |
| She's a corrupt individual who's probably owned by the street gangs. | |
| It's very well known in Chicago that politicians and aldermen take money under the table from street gangs. | |
| It's just how it works. | |
| It's why they do not police certain corners. | |
| It's why they do not investigate crimes. | |
| It's why most Chicago murders actually go unsolved. | |
| So according to the Chicago Tribune, there have been 40,000 homicides in Chicago in the last 63 years. | |
| So in the last 63 years, 40,000 people have killed each other in Chicago, just to give you an idea. | |
| And police solve fewer than one in six killings. | |
| So the police solve less than 15% of all the murders. | |
| So that means that 85% of murders go unsolved. | |
| And a huge part of this is because the gangs tell the police and they tell the aldermen, you're not allowed here. | |
| We'll take care of this ourselves. | |
| And so you kind of put that all together. | |
| They run the city. | |
| So Lori Lightfoot, who again is a total imbecile. | |
| She's incredibly corrupt, might be getting cash onto the table. | |
| Who knows? | |
| She says that Trump is not welcome in our city. | |
| Play tape. | |
| That's not democracy that we saw unfolding on the streets of Portland as a result of this federal action. | |
| That's what we call tyranny and dictatorship. | |
| And we are not having it in Chicago. | |
| Since we, the president and his team, started to rattle the saber that they were going to do exactly the same thing in Chicago that they'd done in Portland. | |
| I've been very clear. | |
| Not happening in Chicago. | |
| We don't need federal troops. | |
| Look, Lori Lightfoot knows nothing about Chicago. | |
| I was raised in the suburbs of Chicago. | |
| I know Chicago very well. | |
| The only way you can solve this problem is you bring federal troops into the city and you start solving these crimes using the Federal Bureau of Investigation. | |
| You say, we are not going to leave until there are no more children being shot in the streets. | |
| Now, President Trump has defended the move based on a refusal of local politicians to protect their citizens. | |
| Play tape. | |
| Today I'm announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime. | |
| We'll work every single day to restore public safety, protect our nation's children, and bring violent perpetrators to justice. | |
| We've been doing it, and you've been seeing what's happening all around the country. | |
| We've just started this process, and frankly, we have no choice but to get involved. | |
| So just to reiterate, 34,000 of 40,000 murders in Chicago have gone unsolved. | |
| If you want to get away with murder, you can literally get away with murder in the city of Chicago. | |
| Senator Cruz introduced a bill to hold local officials liable for allowing violent autonomous zones. | |
| It's called the Reclaim Act. | |
| Now, mind you, Democrats are not going to do anything with any of this. | |
| Black lives being obliterated. | |
| It doesn't matter the Democrat Party. | |
| And this is what's so funny to the NBA, the National Basketball Association. | |
| They have just revealed their new court that says black lives matter on the court where they are going to be playing their social justice playoff in their self-contained little bubble in Orlando. | |
| What they do not mention at all is the 77% of black homicides, 77% of homicides in Chicago every year are black. | |
| They don't mention it because all that matters to them is the fact that a black individual was killed by a white police officer, despite the fact that they knew each other for quite a while leading up to it. | |
| The NBA doesn't care about that at all. | |
| So I completely support it. | |
| There is one downside, which is they are going to try to use this against President Trump politically if it doesn't go well. | |
| Don't see that possibly happening how it doesn't go well, but they're all of a sudden going in and blame all the violence that might continue to happen on President Trump. | |
| This is something that I can tell you that governors and mayors in these cities have failed their citizens so horribly. | |
| Laurie Lightfoot J.B. Pritzker, who's a trust fund baby who has never worked a day in his life. | |
| He was born on third and thought he hit a triple. | |
| And if you think William Howard Taft was a big guy, J.B. has him beat by double. | |
| That's all I have to say. | |
| If J.B. Pritzker ever runs for the president, he would have William Howard Taft. | |
| William Howard Taft was like a CrossFit athlete compared to J.B. Pritzker, okay? | |
| J.B. Pritzker is one of the most despicable human beings I've ever had a chance to meet. | |
| I got to know this guy. | |
| He is a socialist through and through. | |
| He's never worked an honest day in his life. | |
| He inherited the Pritzker family fortune. | |
| And every time you stay at a Hyatt hotel, you're making J.B. Pritzker and Penny Pritzker richer. | |
| Related to all this in Portland, recently, Joe Biden accused federal law enforcement of, quote, brutally attacking peaceful protesters around the federal courthouse in Portland. | |
| Federal officers are operating, quote, without a clearly defined mandate of authority, Biden said in a statement, adding that the White House is, quote, trying to stoke the fires of division in our country. | |
| This is nonsense. | |
| Peaceful protesters, Biden probably has not seen the videos of the nightly assaults on the courthouse. | |
| And I encourage you to look at the videos of police officers literally under fire, literally being having things thrown at them and 48 of them being injured. | |
| But of course, the media decides not to cover that. | |
| The media decides not to talk about that. | |
| Instead, the activist media talks about how Donald Trump wants to take over the inner cities. | |
| Well, it is America to him, too, and these are not autonomous zones. | |
| And actually, Donald Trump cares about black lives being lost. | |
| Donald Trump cares about black children being shot. | |
| Donald Trump cares about black families being torn apart. | |
| Joe Biden does not care about black lives being lost. | |
| The Democrats don't care about black lives being lost. | |
| Barack Obama does not care about black lives being lost. | |
| For them, they think, oh, yeah, a couple thousand black people a year being killed in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. | |
| Who cares? | |
| Unless if a police officer dares do something that is not correct, then all of a sudden they're mobilizing people in the streets. | |
| Of course, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the entire BLM Inc. industry, they're silent because this does not fit their political agenda. | |
| There is rioting, arson, and murder happening in the streets of our great cities. | |
|
Mask Liberty Debate
00:11:05
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|
| Criminals are on the loose. | |
| Democrat governors are releasing criminals by the thousands. | |
| California just announced they're going to release another 10,000 criminals. | |
| They might be coming for your home next. | |
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| Next question from Jack. | |
| Charlie, I love your podcast and thanks for all you do. | |
| I was recently discussing the most recent death of the judge's son and injuring of her husband, who were connected to the Epstein case. | |
| I was recently told that Trump was connected with Epstein too and made trips out to his island. | |
| Is this true, thanks, Kenjack? | |
| No, we have no evidence that Donald Trump ever went to the island. | |
| Period. | |
| Bar none. | |
| Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were not friends. | |
| In fact, he threw Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because Jeffrey Epstein was trying to proposition young girls at his club, Mar-a-Lago. | |
| In fact, Donald Trump in 2015 at CPAC warned us about Lolita Express, Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghelane Maxwell. | |
| Play tape. | |
| Bill Clinton. | |
| Nice guy. | |
| Got a lot of problems coming up, in my opinion, with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein. | |
| A lot of problems. | |
| So Donald Trump, again, was ahead of the curve. | |
| Donald Trump has been on the right side of child sex trafficking and the horror and the sin of it. | |
| Make no mistake. | |
| Jeffrey Epstein was one of the most disgusting people ever to exist in the history of our country. | |
| He used his power, his wealth, and his prestige to traffic young girls and prey on them sexually. | |
| It's one of the most disgusting things a human being can do. | |
| Now, people say, Charlie, did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself? | |
| I don't know that, but it certainly looks like he didn't kill himself. | |
| That's all I have to say. | |
| In fact, even if you go to his Wikipedia page, it says that death, cause of death, questionable. | |
| Yeah, I think that's probably fair. | |
| Now, they're going to try to kill Ghelane Maxwell. | |
| Now, who is they? | |
| Just so you understand, the ruling class across the world, not the same ruling class I always talk about here, but people in the royal family and heads of state, they have a very perverse and dark fascination with taking advantage of young children. | |
| It's just something that has always existed in the highest levels of authority and power all across the world. | |
| It's nothing new. | |
| It's a very strange thing when you start to look at even thousands of years ago in Aztec and Peruvian archaeology and Egyptian archaeology, how people were so invested in child exploitation and child sacrifice. | |
| It's very strange and very bizarre. | |
| I'll let you draw your own conclusions there. | |
| However, Ghelaine Maxwell is now public enemy number one because she has all the secrets on all these people that actually went to the island. | |
| Now, mind you, I think we have to dismiss from our nomenclature, oh, that's a conspiracy theory. | |
| Well, guess what? | |
| I'm going to be honest with you guys. | |
| In 2013, I was at a dinner in Palm Beach. | |
| I'll tell you a true story. | |
| I was at a dinner with Palm Beach with three billionaires that were very well connected. | |
| And one of the billionaires said, yeah, you know, Jeffrey, who lives down the street from here, you know that he's sex trafficking girls to his mansion. | |
| And two of the people said, that's a lie. | |
| That's a conspiracy theory. | |
| Stop saying that. | |
| Of course, it ended up being true. | |
| And he was convicted previously for doing it. | |
| So just because someone says it's a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it's necessarily untrue. | |
| It's actually been proven to be true now. | |
| And now there's federal investigation after federal investigation for doing that. | |
| Now, none of the people at the table were involved in doing it, obviously. | |
| They just knew about it. | |
| It was the worst kept secret in Palm Beach for a decade and a half. | |
| And yet it was just allowed to happen because it was important people that were doing it. | |
| And so I hope every single one of these people rot and burn. | |
| These people that engage in this unspeakable horror, which by the way, the left is now trying to normalize pedophilia. | |
| There is a TED talk out there where they try to normalize pedophilia. | |
| There has been New York Times articles written trying to say that pedophilia is something that we should accept. | |
| So just anticipate that the left is going to try to normalize the exploitation of children. | |
| It's just part of their new agenda. | |
| And if you don't believe me, go look it up yourself. | |
| So then you have President Trump asked about Ghelene Maxwell at the press conference. | |
| Play tape. | |
| I'm wondering, do you feel that she's going to turn in powerful men? | |
| How do you see that working out? | |
| And then President Trump says that he wishes Ghelane well. | |
| Play tape. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I haven't really been following her too much. | |
| I just wish her well, frankly. | |
| I've met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. | |
| But I wish her well, whatever it is. | |
| I don't know the situation with Prince Andrew. | |
| Just don't know. | |
| Now, I think this is being really played up as something that it's not. | |
| I think that people say, oh, Donald Trump wants what's best for a child sex trafficker. | |
| No, I actually think he was sarcastically saying, I don't think this is going to end very well for her, and that's all I can say about that. | |
| I think that just knowing Donald Trump and the way he communicates, I'm going to totally defend him on this. | |
| I think it's unfair to attack him on here. | |
| And people said, oh, he misspoke. | |
| And I just don't agree. | |
| I think that he's saying, I don't think this is going to end well for her or people around her. | |
| That's kind of the tone I got from it. | |
| I think it probably wouldn't be better if he said it, but I found nothing wrong with what he said because I put it in context of his prior statements. | |
| I don't actually think he was saying, I wish I want something good for Ghelain Maxwell. | |
| So again, I will defend President Trump on this. | |
| But look, these are the worst of the worst criminals that use their wealth and their power and their connections to prey on young children. | |
| Every single one of them should be put in prison for life quickly and given very little hope of living a meaningful life after that. | |
| I can't think, I can think of something more evil than this, but it's just at the top level of how evil a human being can become. | |
| And they thought they would get away with it. | |
| They thought what they were doing was perfectly fine to create sex slaves and bring them to New Mexico and an island in the Caribbean. | |
| And Bill Clinton, I can't wait to see you in handcuffs. | |
| If Bill Clinton does not go in handcuffs because of this, then we don't have a justice system. | |
| That simple. | |
| Bill Clinton in jail within a year from today. | |
| Doesn't happen. | |
| I will lose faith in our justice system. | |
| We know he went to the island. | |
| We know he was underage girls. | |
| We have plenty of people that have testified with that. | |
| It's time to put that megalomaniac in jail. | |
| Next question. | |
| Hey, Charlie, Ohio and Indiana governors have both announced a statewide mask law, both Republicans. | |
| Last time I checked, there were no laws passed, but just edicts from governors. | |
| Is this legal? | |
| Connor from Texas. | |
| Hi, Connor from Texas. | |
| Look, I'm going to be very honest. | |
| I'm not a fan of these mask mandates. | |
| If you want to wear a mask, that's liberty. | |
| That's fine. | |
| If you want to wear an Abraham Lincoln hat, you can wear that too. | |
| If you want to wear a New York Yankees hat, that's fine. | |
| I mean, if you think it's going to help you, do not force me to wear a mask. | |
| It's that simple. | |
| I'm not going to do it. | |
| I'm not. | |
| The only time I comply is on the airlines because I actually need to fly the airlines to be able to do my job and travel the country so I can deliver truth to you and make an income and grow Turning Point USA. | |
| So that's the fight I do not fight. | |
| But every single time I go into one of these grocery stores, where's your mask? | |
| I say, well, first of all, the science around masks is very questionable, very questionable. | |
| In fact, some people, some doctors think that masks actually make you sicker and have you less likely to be able to get oxygen and more likely to infect yourself and less likely to be able to fight the virus and actually more likely to be able to die sooner. | |
| A lot of people believe that. | |
| I've met many doctors that hold that view. | |
| Secondly, we have a huge civil liberty issue here. | |
| Why do you have the authority to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body? | |
| I thought it was my body, my choice. | |
| I thought that was the entire thought process as to why we are wrongly able to terminate a million children in the womb every single year. | |
| And so I just don't like being told what to do generally by the federal government. | |
| I'm not a type of person who plays well when the government comes in and starts to say you must put this on your face. | |
| Now, I think there's some restrictions that I support. | |
| I'm actually in the minority. | |
| I support seatbelt laws because I think seatbelts actually save lives. | |
| And I actually think it's not that big of an infringement on your liberty. | |
| I kind of disagree with a lot of people on this. | |
| I mean, some super strict libertarians say, oh, no, no seatbelts ever. | |
| Okay. | |
| If you fly through the window of a car because you didn't want to wear a seatbelt and all of a sudden I have to pay for your health care, that's ridiculous. | |
| A mask might not even work. | |
| A mask is questionable at best. | |
| So the science wearing masks needs to be debated more. | |
| And the fact that these Republican governors are saying, oh, you must wear a mask. | |
| You must wear a mask. | |
| I think it's nonsense. | |
| I don't think it's popular. | |
| I have never met anyone that says, I just love wearing my mask. | |
| I love it. | |
| Yeah, I mean, okay, I am not a fan. | |
| I think it's dehumanizing. | |
| When I see a four-year-old wearing a mask, I can't think but help. | |
| We have let them down and we have robbed them of their childhood. | |
| I think there's something innocent and something special with a childhood about children being able to communicate with facial expressions, and we have robbed them from it. | |
| I encourage you to go back and listen to Dr. Simone Gold on the Charlie Kirk show. | |
| She warned about masks. | |
| I encourage you to listen to it. | |
| Whether you're working from home or working on your fitness, you want to know what you're listening to to be actually what you're listening to, not what your roommates or your neighbors or the garbage that your left-wing neighbor might be listening to. | |
| If they're listening to Rachel Maddow, you need to be able to tune it out. | |
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|
Trump Racism Claims
00:03:37
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| Hi, Charlie. | |
| I need your advice. | |
| I have an ex-friend who always asks me, how can I support a racist and homophobic person like Trump? | |
| How can I combat her comments and attacks on me? | |
| Dolin, well, first of all, you win a signed copy of the MAGA Doctrine. | |
| Congratulations. | |
| First of all, it's really hard. | |
| You have to first just come from the question of, do you think Trump is doing bad or do you think Trump means bad? | |
| Very important distinction. | |
| If your friend thinks Trump means bad, then you have to try to dispel that first. | |
| And that's a hard thing because who actually knows whose motives are what? | |
| How can you actually be able to articulate what a certain individual's motives are and what they are not? | |
| I think it is actually really difficult to be able to articulate what a human being's motives are and why they act in a certain way. | |
| In fact, I think it's dangerous to do that. | |
| I think that if you just try to go out of your way to say, I know exactly why a certain person is doing something, well, you need a lot of evidence to do that. | |
| And we do not have that evidence at all. | |
| We actually have evidence to the contrary as to why Donald Trump is doing what he is doing. | |
| First of all, homophobic. | |
| I'm so sick of this accusation. | |
| Donald Trump is the first incoming president in American history to support gay marriage. | |
| Now, I support biblical marriage, one man, one woman. | |
| I do believe that gay individuals should be able to have equal access to hospital visitations and file taxes together. | |
| But I do believe in biblical marriage, one man, one woman. | |
| With that being said, I do believe that gay people and gay conservatives should be given a full and equal footing in the conservative movement. | |
| I do not believe, as some people do, that gay people should have no place whatsoever in the conservative movement. | |
| I push back against that categorically and completely. | |
| We have gay individuals that work for us at Turning Point USA. | |
| Some of my best friends, Dave Rubin, other entrepreneurs, Peter Thiel, are openly gay. | |
| So I just think that this idea that you cannot be in the conservative movement because you are gay is rubbish and nonsense and should be categorically rejected altogether and completely. | |
| And then this idea of Trump being a racist. | |
| Well, wouldn't you think that someone is a racist has been showing their colors for multiple decades? | |
| Donald Trump was revered by the black community. | |
| Donald Trump had rap songs written about him. | |
| Donald Trump was one of the most loved individuals in pop culture America for decades. | |
| Then, all of a sudden, when he decides to run for president because he was worried about losing his country, he becomes the worst thing you could possibly call somebody in our country. | |
| And the problem is, because of what he said post-Charlottesville, which actually he said nothing wrong. | |
| He did not call the people that were the white supremacists fine people. | |
| In fact, he said that they were fine people on the both sides of the statue argument, which is a completely different thing. | |
| And you literally cannot refute this argument enough. | |
| They found what they wanted, they found what they thought they needed, and they tried to create him into a racist. | |
| This is incredibly dangerous and destructive. | |
| And in a lot of different ways, it has created something that is categorically untrue. | |
| At Turning Point USA, we have hosted the nation's largest black leadership summit for two years now with hundreds and hundreds of black leaders. | |
| I've yet to see Joe Biden be able to host a black leadership summit. | |
| Here's the point: I think that there should and can be a seismic change happening in the black community in support of President Trump. | |
| We're going to have to keep on that. | |
| BLM Inc. is trying to make your skin color directly connected with how you vote, which is a highly racist way of looking at the world because I think that BLM Inc. are the actual racists. | |
|
Faith and Suffering
00:14:53
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|
| So, look, best of luck to you continuing to try to communicate that. | |
| Try to be as clear as you can and convince them that Donald Trump is the opposite of a racist. | |
| He's actually a decent, open-minded, and very accepting person who looks at people on character, not based on skin color. | |
| Here's a longer question, but an important one. | |
| Hi, Charlie. | |
| My name is Jonathan, and I have been a huge fan of yours since I turned 18 in 2016 and voted for the first time for the amazing Donald Trump. | |
| I listen to your podcast every single day, and I watch all of your videos. | |
| You are really a great person, and I'm truly glad we have you on our side. | |
| Thank you. | |
| All of that aside, though, I became an atheist around my freshman year of high school. | |
| I was going through some horrible stuff at the time and had been going through bad things for years before that. | |
| I lost my faith because I couldn't imagine how an all-loving God could allow all of his creation to go through stuff like that. | |
| It's understandable. | |
| I was hard-set in my beliefs, and always said I would never change my mind. | |
| Recently, though, I started to question my atheist beliefs and have begun searching for God again. | |
| My question to you is: where do I start? | |
| Where do I begin my journey to find God again? | |
| And would I even be accepted if I did find him? | |
| Yes, you would be. | |
| It's something that weighs heavily on my shoulders and on my heart. | |
| And you being a person who's deeply committed to his faith and to God, I thought maybe you'd be able to help me out. | |
| I appreciate any answer you can give me, and I appreciate everything you do for this country and for us conservatives. | |
| Thank you, Jonathan. | |
| Amazing question. | |
| Thank you. | |
| First of all, thank you for emailing me, Jonathan. | |
| That's not an easy email to send. | |
| I have to say that believing in atheism is a very dark belief. | |
| It's a belief in nothingness. | |
| It's a belief that there is no afterlife. | |
| There is no creator. | |
| And the furthest extension of it actually creates very miserable people. | |
| So, first thing I encourage you to do, I'm sure a lot of people have told you to read the Bible, but it's actually really good advice. | |
| There's two books of the Bible I encourage you to read: Proverbs and the book of John. | |
| Those are the two books I encourage you to read. | |
| John is a great book for new believers to read. | |
| It's about the testimony and the life of Jesus Christ. | |
| It's written incredibly well, and it's one of the most read, if not the most read, book in the entire Bible, with the most famous verse in the entire Bible, for God so loved the world that he gave us as one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. | |
| John 3.16. | |
| Proverbs is different. | |
| See, I encourage you, if you're trying to find belief in God, to ask yourself, look at the world around you. | |
| Look at how men and women are made for each other. | |
| Look at the laws of nature and how they work, the laws of physics and chemistry and how we have oxygen and how the sun comes up for just about half the day. | |
| And all of a sudden, you start to see there's a harmony to all this. | |
| There's almost a synchrony. | |
| And ask yourself, was this all done by mistake? | |
| Or am I actually believing in faith of nothingness more than a faith in a creator? | |
| I actually think that it takes more faith to be an atheist than faith to believe in God. | |
| I truly believe that. | |
| And here's a really important question to ask yourself as an atheist. | |
| Do I hope I'm wrong? | |
| It's a very important question. | |
| If you hope you are wrong, then you want to find what is good more than what you think is correct and what is right. | |
| If you don't hope you are wrong, then therefore you want what you think is correct more than what is good. | |
| For people that are atheists that say, oh, I hope I'm correct. | |
| So you never want to see your loved ones again? | |
| You hope that there isn't an afterlife? | |
| You hope that there isn't a God? | |
| I also challenge you to pray. | |
| God will listen to all of us, regardless if we are Christian. | |
| We're atheist. | |
| Prayer is a direct connection to the Almighty, a way that you can connect deeply to him. | |
| And finally, I'm happy to go through the archaeological argument, the apologetic argument of why Jesus Christ was a real person who walked the earth, lived a perfect life, died a brutal death, and then rose again in three days. | |
| I could summarize and say it, it just happened. | |
| But more than that, we have four eyewitness accounts written from four different perspectives, all saying the same thing, never contradicting each other about Jesus Christ's testimony, all within a couple decade window of Jesus Christ walking the earth. | |
| Mind you, also, the early church. | |
| Look at how fervent and committed the early Christians were to the creation of the church. | |
| Look at how much they sacrificed, from Stephen being stoned to Paul going from a Roman Jewish persecutor to someone who died a horrendous, martyred death. | |
| All of the disciples died martyr deaths. | |
| So I think that might be helpful to you because you strike me as someone who really enjoys history. | |
| But more than that, there is an experiential side to your faith in Christ or your faith in God. | |
| And first, you just have to ask. | |
| So where do you start? | |
| The Bible, the book of Proverbs, and of John. | |
| I encourage you to read Mere Christianity. | |
| It's phenomenal. | |
| If you are a more logical person and you're just like, I just need facts, read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. | |
| It is one of the most factual defenses of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. | |
| Someone who started as an atheist and then became a Bible-believing Christian and one of the most effective evangelists across the world. | |
| And I can tell you this: you will go through ups and downs in your struggle in believing or not there is a God. | |
| And you might say, God doesn't love us. | |
| How could God create all this suffering, but God created you and you believe that you have agency, I'm sure. | |
| And if you believe that you have agency and you have some choice, then you are able to choose that gift he gave us, which is Jesus Christ. | |
| And for those of you that are out there that might be struggling right now and say, is life even worth it? | |
| Is there meaning? | |
| Of course there is. | |
| Yes. | |
| Things do get better. | |
| And as a Christian, of course, I talk about how you need to accept Jesus Christ and go to church and take responsibility for your life and stop doing things that you know are bad for you and feel good in the short term and believe in delayed gratification and maybe stop drinking and maybe stop doing drugs and maybe stop watching that harmful thing on television and maybe stop playing video games all day and maybe you should exercise more. | |
| You know the answer to those. | |
| You know what's good for you and what's not. | |
| I'm just telling you to start doing those things because that will actually give you a more meaningful life. | |
| It's really interesting because the way the culture is programmed towards us, we are supposed to believe that the late nights on Friday night till 2 a.m. where you drink endlessly and you don't even remember what you did or you're promiscuous in some other capacity like that's going to give you meaning. | |
| It won't. | |
| It'll actually make you really miserable. | |
| In fact, what will give you meaning is actually stopping doing those things because you're aiming at something that will actually give you fulfillment. | |
| And so if you're going through a really tough time right now, I get it. | |
| Our whole country is shut down and we're in political turmoil. | |
| But this too shall pass. | |
| And so that verse in Exodus that says this too shall pass, it has two meanings. | |
| It means that if you're going through something bad, you're going through something that is unfortunate, it'll end. | |
| It also means that if you're going through something good, that too will end. | |
| So enjoy it. | |
| It has a dual meaning. | |
| So it means whatever you are going through right now, it's not a state of permanency. | |
| It's not. | |
| It might feel like it is, might feel like an endless rut. | |
| See, we as Christians don't talk enough about how we are able to apply the teachings of Christ and not necessarily live a more flourishing life. | |
| I think that is nonsensical prosperity gospel stuff, but a more meaningful life. | |
| I think that's a huge difference. | |
| And of course, maybe you want to flourish, and I support that. | |
| I'm a free market guy. | |
| I think that flourishing is good. | |
| And I think the more flourishing we have, we'll be able to give back to the kingdom. | |
| But let's talk about meaning before we talk about material flourishing. | |
| Meaning, in the sense of the word, is that you wake up every single day and you have something worth protecting and preserving. | |
| That you have something when someone tries to go and destroy something, you're willing to sacrifice for that something that is beautiful, that is good. | |
| It might be kids, it might be a job, it might be work. | |
| And that's one of the big tragedies of our generation is that you've been told not to marry, you've been told to not marry until a certain age, you've been told to just indulge yourself in endless substances, and somehow that's going to make you the happiest person in the world. | |
| You know that's not the case if you're listening to this. | |
| But even beyond that, I'm a big believer in self-authoring. | |
| I encourage you guys to look it up. | |
| Self-authoring. | |
| Type it into your search engine. | |
| Jordan Peterson does this exercise. | |
| He'll walk you through it. | |
| And you take out a piece of paper and you map out for a couple minutes straight exactly what you think your life might look like with meaning a couple years from now, two years from now. | |
| And then you start to take tangible steps and you remove three things from your life that might be getting in the way of you achieving that. | |
| This idea of nothing but indulgence and no responsibility will create a miserable generation. | |
| So to kind of tie the question together, Jonathan, I meandered in a direction there. | |
| I truly believe that if you believe in God, if you believe in a higher power, you truly do, and you act like God exists. | |
| You don't just say God exists, but you act like God exists, a God that judges you, a God that loves you, then I think that you'll really be able to break yourself free, which Christ does, from that suffering that you once encountered earlier in your life, which is horrific. | |
| You didn't go into detail in it, but I can understand it. | |
| Because the kind of suffering that you go through early in your life can be very formative and can be almost a form of a prison sentence for you for the rest of your life. | |
| And I understand that and I get that. | |
| However, what if I told you that that doesn't have to be your destiny? | |
| What if I told you that the shackles that you think you're wearing does not have to be the life that you have to live? | |
| In fact, it can be the exact opposite. | |
| In fact, it can be a place that you are proud once happened and you learn so much from it and you saw that you can actually live a meaningful life and you can. | |
| So if you're asking yourself the question, do I give up? | |
| The answer is absolutely not. | |
| The answer is that you live in a country that gives you agency, that gives you freedom of choice and religion, at least to the recording of this podcast. | |
| And you should go pursue what is meaningful and good and what is true and what is proven to make people live lives that give you responsibility and fulfillment. | |
| So Jonathan, keep going. | |
| I will pray for you. | |
| And I am deeply committed to my faith into God. | |
| And I'm a sinner just like everyone else. | |
| We all are. | |
| We all fall short. | |
| We believe in original sin. | |
| No one is perfect. | |
| I can tell you, though, what gives me meaning is when I start to get messages from people where they say, Charlie, I used to believe this and now I believe that. | |
| Or Charlie, I was close towards self-harm and you were able to help me. | |
| That's really meaningful. | |
| In fact, it's a lot more meaningful than just getting some award from somebody. | |
| And that doesn't really give you, what gives you meaning is when you actually have a connection to a human being and you're able to see that you're helping them. | |
| So I encourage you to pursue that, Jonathan. | |
| Thank you so much for the question. | |
| These are questions that we are getting at freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com. | |
| This is from Connie. | |
| Last question. | |
| I can't thank you enough for your podcast on Cancel Culture. | |
| I needed to hear everything you said, having been through some really bad thoughts of late since the political issues have escalated. | |
| I have had a difficult situation at church. | |
| The pastor whom I've followed forever has helped ground me in Christianity and happened to mention, speaking with Al Sharpton following the Minnesota Minneapolis riots. | |
| My goodness. | |
| I couldn't believe it. | |
| There's more, but that's the short of it. | |
| Anyway, it has made me question everything. | |
| I know this pastor is not in God, but that, along with this country and my personal issues right now, have left me in a really difficult and confusing place. | |
| I don't even know why I'm on this planet any longer. | |
| What you said astounded me. | |
| I never expected it. | |
| Then you said Des Moines, Iowa. | |
| Silly coincidence, but I found it interesting. | |
| That's where I'm at. | |
| Anyway, I feel like God really used you in my life for good. | |
| And I wanted you to know there are not words for how much I appreciate and needed to hear what you said. | |
| I've posted that podcast, The Parlor, and subscribed to you in Apple. | |
| God bless sincerely, Connie. | |
| Well, that gives you meaning. | |
| Thank you, Connie. | |
| That's what I need to hear. | |
| And wow, it's incredible. | |
| So thank you. | |
| So look, let's close this podcast on this note. | |
| And again, we are a comprehensive podcast. | |
| We cover sports. | |
| We cover culture. | |
| We cover religion. | |
| We cover philosophy. | |
| We obviously cover politics. | |
| We are a one-stop shop podcast that we give you more content than any other show out there. | |
| But for those of you that are struggling out there and you say, what is there to live for? | |
| A lot is the answer. | |
| In fact, there's a beautiful life waiting for you. | |
| There is. | |
| And if you make a series of very methodical choices and believe in the principle of delayed gratification, that life is right there for the taking. | |
| And I know it might not seem that way, but if you do something that is good every day for a long period of time, all of a sudden good things will start to happen. | |
| So if you save a dollar a day for a decade, you'll have a very serious amount of money. | |
| If you go out of your way to act as ethically as you possibly can, and at the very best tell the truth, but at least don't lie and don't lie to yourself. | |
| You see, a lot of self-misery comes in lying to yourself. | |
| As soon as you are brutally honest with yourself, then all of a sudden you can break yourself free. | |
| This is what Christ talks about, setting yourself free from sin. | |
| Because when you lie, you're actually then a captive to that untruth that you told the world. | |
| So, for example, when you say to yourself, it doesn't really matter if I keep on eating ice cream to 2 a.m. | |
| Who cares? | |
| No, it actually does matter. | |
| That's a lie you're telling yourself. | |
| And all of a sudden, it doesn't make you very happy. | |
| You have all that sugar in you and might gain some weight because of it. | |
| And so, if you're trying to find a way to break out and break through, here's three concrete things that you can do in the next two weeks. | |
| If you're just kind of in a rut and you're like, I just can't get out of this, I just can't. | |
| Here's some three things: number one, stop doing one thing that you consciously know is not good for you. | |
| Stop it. | |
| Quit doing it. | |
| You know what that is. | |
| Stop it. | |
| Number two, exercise every single day. | |
| Motion is directly related to emotion. | |
| It might be a walk. | |
| It might be weightlifting. | |
| It might be doing something with, you know, with sports or friends. | |
| That's number two. | |
| Number three, learn something by the end of the day you didn't know at the beginning of the day. | |
| It might be listening to this podcast. | |
|
Daily Self Improvement
00:02:39
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|
| It might be reading a great book, which you can do so on thinker.org/slash Charlie, which we have talked about before, thinker.org slash Charlie. | |
| It might be exploring a philosopher, but instead of watching that trash on television, on Netflix, and I flipped through Netflix the other night, I was repulsed. | |
| I mean, it's all just social programming designed to hypnotize us to hate our country. | |
| It's just awful. | |
| Maybe you're going to explore a big idea. | |
| Maybe you're going to write down that idea for two weeks and you're going to say, I'm going to try to be a better understanding of that. | |
| For example, that idea that Jonathan said, How could God create the world the way it is if he loved us? | |
| Well, there's a lot of good scholarship on that. | |
| You're not the first person to come up with that question. | |
| Okay, I hate to break it to you. | |
| Robbie Zacharias, other people have explored that at great lengths. | |
| It's worth going towards it. | |
| So if you stop doing that one thing, you exercise every day and you wrestle with a big idea, all of a sudden you're going to start to realize that your entire tonal level will elevate. | |
| All of a sudden, you're going to start to think more clearly. | |
| You're going to see things with direction. | |
| And I'm going to tell you, if you make good choices, you will be rewarded for those choices. | |
| You will. | |
| We live in a country still that allows you to do that. | |
| Try to be a better person today than you were yesterday. | |
| Be nicer to people. | |
| Be more gentle. | |
| And we all fall short of this. | |
| It's part of the human condition. | |
| But ask yourself, am I generally moving in a direction that will make my life have more meaning and the people around me have more meaning? | |
| See, we are not meant to just be self-isolated individuals. | |
| We are built to be in a community. | |
| That's far from the same thing that saying we should all have collective ownership. | |
| But if you are not positively impacting the people around you, then you yourself are probably not having meaning. | |
| So maybe find one thing you're good at and pour into somebody else. | |
| It might help you along the way. | |
| We're happy to dive into that more. | |
| But if you guys want to email me and how I can help you, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com. | |
| I want to thank those of you that help support our program at charliekirk.com slash support, charliekirk.com slash support. | |
| Type in Charlie Kirk, show your podcast provider. | |
| Hit subscribe. | |
| Give us a five-star review. | |
| Get involved at TurningPointUSA, TPUSA.com, TPUSA.com. | |
| If you're listening to this and you're saying, my life has no worth, you're wrong. | |
| It does. | |
| Do those three things. | |
| Pray. | |
| Read the book of Proverbs and the book of John. | |
| Email me with anything you're struggling with. | |
| I do read all the emails. | |
| Freedom at CharlieKirk.com, Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. | |
| Thank you guys so much. | |
| Talk to you soon. | |
| God bless. | |