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April 19, 2022 - The Charlie Kirk Show
36:35
Highest Level of Teenage Sadness EVER with Michael Knowles
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Why America's Youth Are Sad 00:13:41
Hey everybody, it's on the Charlie Kirk Show.
Michael Knowles joins us to talk about architecture and why are people so sad.
Why is America sad?
It's the saddest generation in history.
That's teenagers right now.
Take a pause.
It's not going to be the most uplifting episode, but it's very important.
Let's explore it together.
Let's find out some solutions.
We talk about solutions, but it's critically important why this is the saddest generation in history.
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We go.
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This segment and the one following is not going to be the most uplifting segment that we ever do here on the Charlie Kirk Show, but arguably one of the most important.
This is a segment that you're not going to want to hear, and you might not think it's real, but I could tell you from my experience with young people, it's absolutely real.
And it's a story that actually starts in the publication for Lorene Powell Jobs, The Atlantic, quote, why American teens are so sad.
Four forces are propelling the rise of rates of depression amongst young people.
Now, before you kind of just roll your eyes and say, oh, whatever, toughen it up, this is a huge problem with our nation's young people.
I know at least two young people in my general circle, periphery, I did not know them personally, that committed suicide in the last week.
It's a serious issue.
Young people are, by definition, now the most alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted, depressed, sad, suicidal, anxious, medicated generation in history.
Now, there's many reasons as to why this is the case.
One of the reasons, of course, would be our imprudent response to the Chinese coronavirus, locking down our entire society.
It was not the pandemic that did it.
It was our reaction to the pandemic.
Now, if you're listening to this right now and you're a parent or a grandparent, an aunt or an uncle, I hope you listen to these words very carefully.
Because if you have a young person in your life, they might not be telling the truth about how sad they actually are.
This generation will be the most suicidal generation in history when the numbers come out.
In fact, the numbers already show it.
We don't know how this year is going to shake out.
Theatlantic.com writes, quote, the United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental health crisis.
From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high school students who say they, quote, feel persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 26% to 44%, according to a new CDC study.
This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded.
Now, I don't trust the CDC, and I know you don't either.
But if you dive into this study, it really isn't that politicized.
It was done in a pretty fair, double-blind way, but let's pretend it's not 26, 44.
Let's say it's only 30%.
Let's say that it's off by a 50% mark of an increase.
That's still unbelievable.
The government survey was over 8,000 high school students, pretty big sample size, which was conducted in the first six months of 2021, last year.
It found a great deal of variation in mental health among different groups.
More than one in four girls reported that they have seriously contemplated committing suicide during the pandemic, which was twice the rate of boys.
Nearly half of gay teens, LGBTQ teens, say they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic, compared with 14% of their heterosexual peers.
Sadness among white teens seems to be rising faster than among other groups.
The Atlantic writes, quote, but the big picture here is the same across all categories.
Almost every measure of mental health is getting worse for every single teenage demographic.
And it's happening all across the country.
Since 2009, sadness and hopelessness have increased for every race, for straight teens, for gay teens, for teens who say they've never had sex, for teens who say they have had sex with males and or females, for students in every year of high school, for all teens in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
So that's the what.
And you look at the chart, it's remarkable.
I could say this.
I mean, we get emails at freedom at charliekirk.com every single day.
Charlie, I have no hope.
There is no meaning.
There is no purpose.
I can't find my place.
Now, of course, and this is reflected in a lot of young people's disapproval of Joe Biden.
Only 21% of young people approve of Joe Biden because everything is terrible.
And I saw this at Berkeley and in just pure terms, the dystopian sadness and depression.
People are not happy anymore under the age of 30.
Now, some adults you listening right now is like, oh, come on, just get happy, snap out of it.
Just hold on a second.
Let's have a little bit of sympathy.
Let's just walk through and see if there's any sort of validity to these claims and what we could possibly do about it.
I don't want to live in a sad country.
We are living in a sad country right now.
This is something that transcends political lines, by the way, or it should, even though our politics played into this significantly.
Our political decisions of locking down our country, putting masks on children, have made children sadder.
And a lot of parents don't know what to do about it.
Well, the first problem, and I'm going to go through the Atlantic piece and where they go wrong, the first problem is the overindulgence of pleasure.
The restraints that you put on your impulses, the restraints you put on what feels good, is what we call civilization.
Not doing what feels good all the time is what creates mature and happy people.
Unfortunately, we've created a set of circumstances and a scenario where 12, 13, and 14-year-olds do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it, whether it be sexually, whether it be with drugs, whether it be through any sort of process.
They have prioritized, not processed, any sort of indulgence, I should say.
They have prioritized, our society has prioritized pleasure above all.
Pleasure comes with a price.
Pleasure comes with a price that means that you are going to overload your dopamine reactors.
Your life will not, you won't know what meaning is.
That's number one.
Now, the Atlantic speculates a couple things.
The Atlantic speculates, they're not totally wrong here, that we have the saddest, most depressed, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted generation in history because of four reasons.
Number one, social media use.
I agree.
Number two, socializing is down.
I agree.
Number three, the world is stressful and there's more news about the world stressors.
I agree.
I think that's overblown.
Number four, modern parenting strategies.
I agree.
Most parents are terrible.
I see it firsthand.
And whenever I say that, I get so many angry emails about how great of a parent you are.
I say, okay, well, maybe you're a great parent.
I don't know.
So the Atlantic quotes, why is this happening?
Quote, I want to propose several answers to that question.
And this is the first thing.
First fallacy that we could chalk this all up to teens behaving badly is in fact, a lot of self-reported teen behaviors are moving in a positive direction.
This is what's so amazing.
Now, I don't totally agree with all this because pornography is up and drug use is up, but drinking and driving is down.
Okay, school fights are down.
Sex before marriage, sex before 13 is down by 70%.
I didn't even know that was a thing.
Sounds really creepy and weird.
School bullying is down and LGBTQ acceptance is up.
Oh, that's interesting.
So LGBQQ acceptance is up, yet there's more depression.
And socialization is down, and there's more depression.
So I think it's more nuanced than this.
I don't think the Atlantic is totally right.
I don't think teen behavior is getting better.
I don't.
But that's fine.
I think that there's some metrics that I think it's a mixed bag.
Teen suicides are up in a massive way.
Anxiety and depression, eating disorders, self-harming behavior, sharply up over the past decade.
And what's amazing is that the richest countries in the world actually have the highest suicide rates.
The wealthier a country is with a couple outliers, the more likely your children are to want to kill themselves.
In really poor countries, they don't have suicide problems.
Something we're thinking about.
The third fallacy is that the mental health crisis was principally caused by the pandemic and the overaction of COVID.
This is what he writes.
Quote, rising teenage sadness isn't a new trend, but rather the acceleration and broadening of a trend that clearly started before the pandemic.
You're right, but our reaction to the pandemic was ridiculous and it was imprudent and it was dangerous and it was wrong.
But I have to say that the thing that drives this more than anything else that this piece doesn't even dare touch on is the defeat and the destruction of what Friedrich Nietzsche warned us about, which is the death of God.
Now, God is not dead.
He's certainly alive, especially for those of us Christians.
We had a great Easter weekend.
But if the predominant culture, the predominant movie production apparatus, the predominant social media belief, when I go to Berkeley and I have 40 kids in front of me, I say, how many of you are atheists?
And all their hands go up.
Like, no wonder why you're so miserable.
How can you possibly have meaning if you believe in nothingness?
Atheism is by definition a gateway drug to misery.
That's not to say there aren't happy atheists.
There's plenty of them out there.
Of course there are.
But generally, an atheistic society will breed a lack of optimism and a culture of despair.
There's a lot more I want to talk about with this, and this is by Derek Thompson.
I actually think did a pretty good job here, even though he's a left-winger.
I disagree with some of this here, but the article's going viral and it should.
It's The Atlantic.
We're going to put it on CharlieKirk.com.
Why American teens are so sad?
And if you have a teenager in your life, keep your eyes on them.
And I'm going to tell you some things I think that can be helpful to that.
It's the saddest generation in history.
But meanwhile, baby boomers are richer than ever and they actually approve of Joe Biden a lot more than young people.
The generational divide in America has never been so dramatic.
I'm not saying baby boomers are to blame for that necessarily, but it's true.
What's true is the divide.
Almost every day we hear about another major corporation that has gone woke.
Disney hates you and everyone should cancel Disney.
They hate families.
Disney made tons of money off of being family friendly and family safe.
Now it's time to divest from Disney.
There's a lot of companies like T-Mobile that's firing all their unvaccinated employees.
They're tormenting their employees with leftist propaganda and funding organizations who seem to hate this country.
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So we had this meal in Dallas.
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And he laid it all out.
And I got it.
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Okay.
So you're a conservative Christian cell phone provider and I don't have to pay all these woke companies.
And it just like clicked in a minute.
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People ask all the time, Charlie, what do I do?
What do I do?
Well, a good way to start is, you know, make your cell phone bill, whatever.
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The Cost of Instant Gratification 00:05:05
Every generation has a moment that they remember, whether it be the 2008 financial crisis or whether it be D-Day, or World War II, I should say, Pearl Harbor, or the Vietnam War.
You look at the generation that grew up in the 80s and 90s, plenty of things they had to deal with, but nothing close to what this generation has to deal with.
And social media addiction is playing a huge role in this.
A lot of parents just kind of throw a screen in front of their kids and say, oh, yeah, this is fine, even though it's resulting in a huge increase in every negative trend we can imagine.
Quote, across the country, we've witnessed dramatic increases in emergency department visits from all mental health emergencies, including suspected suicide attempts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics said.
Today's teenagers are more comfortable talking about their mental health, but rising youth sadness is no illusion.
Now, of course, part of the problem, of course, is the medication that is being prescribed.
Doesn't seem as if the antidepressants are making any sort of dent in any of this.
It's the most medicated generation in history as well.
A pandemic and closure.
The pandemic of closure in schools likely accelerated teen loneliness and sadness.
Found that loneliness spiked in the first year of the pandemic, but it rose significantly for young people.
Quote, it's well established that what protects teens from stress is close social relationships.
When kids can't go to school to see their friends and peers and mentors, social isolation could lead to sadness and depression, particularly for those predisposed to feeling sad or depressed.
But of course, the adults locked down the kids, didn't they?
Did they think this through?
Well, we were told that we must 15 days to slow the spread.
What a lie.
This is more important to say clearly, quote, aloneness isn't the same as loneliness, and loneliness isn't the same as depression.
But more aloneless, including from heavy smartphone use, and more loneliness, including from school closures, might have combined to push up sadness among teenagers who need socialization to protect from all the pressures of a stressful world.
So, what are parents supposed to do about this?
Well, first of all, take the phone out of your kids' hands.
Do a Sabbath at least one a day, 24 hours without a phone.
If you say it's not possible, I don't believe you.
It's just that simple.
Get the phone out of their hands.
Make sure your kids aren't doing alcohol or drugs.
Those things are very bad for kids.
They're depressants and they're bad regardless of their age, but they're especially bad when they're 15, 16, or 17.
Make sure they understand what a meaningful relationship would actually be, meaning a relationship with a man or a woman or what that would be.
Make sure that their eyes are being protected with what they're consuming online and that what they value is not rooted in an immediate burst of pleasure, but instead something that takes work over a long period of time.
Children that understand that things that are valuable take effort and investment over a long period of time will be much happier than children that believe that things can happen instantaneously.
We call that instant gratification, but let's think about it.
If you raise a child to believe that things can happen at a push of a button, isn't that what you're reinforcing with a smartphone, by the way?
You're reinforcing that dopamine is on demand.
Well, guess what?
The brain's not supposed to be built that way.
Dopamine on demand is not the way that our brain is configured.
So by the time you're 15, your serotonin, your capacity to produce seropotonin, your neurotransmitters are fried by the time you're 15.
Like, where am I supposed to get my happiness from?
I keep on pushing these buttons because their parents who didn't know any better, who didn't listen to our warnings over the last decade, because they didn't want a parent, they wanted to be their kids' friend, their friend, hand them an iPad.
And meanwhile, all they're doing is eroding their dopamine every single day.
You know, the people that create these applications, the people behind Apple, the people behind Pinterest, the people behind Facebook, they don't even allow their own kids to use these devices.
Why?
Because they know how dangerous they are.
The same reason why the tobacco manufacturers didn't let their teenagers smoke cigarettes in the 1950s and 60s, because they knew the cigarettes actually would hurt their kids.
It's a huge problem.
So what's a parent to do?
Well, that's a good place to start.
Good place to start is to challenge your child, especially young men.
Give them something worth living for.
Tell them that they have to stop doing something in order to get something.
I don't see that very often in young people.
And finally, reinforce the belief in objective and absolute truth.
If you believe in subjective truth and the subjective, let's say, view of existence, they will deduce themselves down to nothingness.
I could go at length for Man's Search for Meaning, which is just phenomenal book by Viktor Frankl.
And then, yes, every child should have to read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, who was in a concentration camp himself.
I think it was Auschwitz.
It might have been Buchenwald or Auschwitz, and came up with the entire school of psychotherapy called Logotherapy.
Defining Objective Truth for Kids 00:12:33
Prager has a great book called Happiness is a Serious Problem.
All these are good books.
But it all comes down to this: Do you believe some things are absolutely true?
If not, you'll make yourself go mad and you'll descend into a tornado of pleasure.
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With us right now is one of my favorite Catholics in the world, Michael Nulls, smart guy, and really came to my defense last week, which I didn't ask for.
I was trending on Twitter.
I'm not even allowed on Twitter, but I was still trending as a Twitter person.
And someone texted me.
They said, Charlie, you're trending on Twitter because of your building comment.
I was like, whatever.
And the great Michael Knowles came and defended me, which was awesome to see.
And he's with us now.
Michael, welcome back to the program.
Charlie, great to be with you, as always.
So let's dive into the topic that I was talking about.
I said, and I didn't say it as precisely as I said it previously or afterwards, is that population density and also very tall buildings can have an unintended effect, such as creating the tragedy of the commons and a society of renters and not people that own property.
In fact, population density is one of the leading predictors of whether or not someone will vote Democrat and the country going liberal.
What are your thoughts?
I so loved that you made this comment.
I only found it because your publicists over at Media Matters decided to clip this out because they thought that what you said was stupid and crazy and so off the wall.
Here's that lunatic, Charlie Kirk, talking about how big buildings turn people into libs or whatever.
And I thought about it for a second and I realized not only is what you said true, it is one of the most insightful things I've ever heard you say, or really any conservative in modern memory.
You're making a point that we have known since the Tower of Babel.
You're making a point that we have known.
Certainly Edmund Burke has articulated this.
The modern conservative philosophical movement came out of a man who was an aesthetic philosopher, Edmund Burke.
We know that place matters, that architecture and art matter.
When you're in a place, it's either going to slightly raise your spirits or slightly lower your spirits.
We're incarnate beings.
That's kind of how we live.
And it was a point that Chesterton made really, really well.
In one of G.K. Chesterton's detective stories, one of the Father Brown stories, it's called The Hammer of God, I think is the name of this story.
Chesterton says that people should be very cautious about praying in the tallest places, about living in the tallest places.
Because from the really, really tall places, all the people look like ants.
Everything looks small.
The people look like bugs.
But when you're down on the bottom, in the valley, on the floor, on your knees, praying, and you look up, only then can you see heaven.
Then everything looks really, really big.
We could go on about this for hours.
This is a crucial conservative insight into human nature and the way that societies form.
And so I'm so grateful that those dolts over at Media Matters are such Philistines, so deeply uneducated, that they would popularize a great insight that you had.
Well, I appreciate that.
And I mean, so we take a town you're familiar with, Nashville.
And so when I visited Nashville last, I'll never forget they had at least 12 construction cranes and massive high-rises going up, right?
All to be future renting high-rises.
And I was at this event with Senator Bill Haggerty and Senator Marshall Blackburn and Governor Bill Lee, and I have respect for all of them.
And I was like so obsessed.
I was like, you guys have got to stop allowing these buildings to be built.
And they would look at me like, what are you talking about?
Like, this is a great thing for Nashville.
I was like, of course, it's good for development, good for property values, good for jobs, good for economic progress.
But what the unintended consequence they don't realize, and this has happened in Phoenix, Arizona, that Phoenix had height restrictions for a long time, which therefore incentivized, which was the suburban sprawl.
The largest suburb in America is Phoenix, Arizona, all the way from Glendale out to Queen Creek.
It's like 100 miles almost, not that much.
It's like about 65 to 70 miles, if you will, of like suburban sprawl from one side to the other.
And then now all of a sudden they're saying, well, because of environmentalist reasons, we have to now go vertical, which is now hyper-liberalizing some of these areas.
Why are people not mentioning this, Michael?
Well, because it's working for the libs, and so they're going to keep on doing it.
And I also think it's because they actually don't really appreciate the philosophical and the aesthetic point here.
Just think of it in your own experience.
When you are walking around Grand Central in New York, Grand Central is a big building, the big train station, but it's not a skyscraper.
It's not a tall building.
And crucially, people are not walking around all the top levels of Grand Central.
You're on the ground and you look up and it's really big.
And you walk into New York, you feel like a king.
You feel dignified.
This is true of great cathedrals.
I love big, big giant cathedrals, but I don't want to be praying at the very tippy top.
I don't want a skyscraper cathedral where I'm praying on the 120th floor.
I like to look up and raise my eyes up to heaven.
And now think about when you've been in some glass and steel, soulless skyscraper.
You don't feel good.
You don't feel dignified.
And I do have this sense that the masters of the universe, the gazillionaire oligarchs who are trying to turn us all into a woke utopia, I suspect they look out of their giant glass towers and they see people below and they think, oh, here's how I can tinker.
Here's how I can totally transform society.
These little ants so far below me.
It's inhuman.
It's really dehumanizing for the people down below and also for the people who are viewing themselves in this way.
So Michael, I want to get your comments on something we opened the hour with, which I'm sure you can riff on at great length.
It's an Atlantic article that's actually pretty helpful, which is rare for them.
Why American Teenagers Are So Sad.
And it talks about how it's the saddest generation in history.
Majority of young people are dealing with depression, highest suicide rates in history.
Why is this happening?
There are lots of reasons, and they're all sort of kind of related.
But just to tie it in with the conversation we're having, the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton pointed out that if you want to have a, he's a wonderful, wonderful conservative philosopher.
I really recommend people watch his clips on YouTube and read his books.
He observed that if you want to have a conservative society, and by definition, that means a more content society, a more comfortable society.
When you're a conservative, you often like the way things are.
You at least like the tradition.
You want to conserve something.
And when you're a radical, you know, you want to upend everything, whether it's the buildings or human nature or education or everything in the middle.
And Scruton made this point.
He said, if you want a more conservative society, you need to give people a place that is lovable.
You got to put them in a place where they feel comfortable, where they feel at home.
And so this isn't just about the buildings, of course.
This is about family.
This is about community.
This is about settled institutions that we can rely on.
Now, neither party even believes in the integrity of our elections.
We don't even believe in the basic premises of our institutions of government.
And with some good reason, by the way, because they've been very corrupted.
We don't believe in basic truths about human nature, as you've mentioned before.
Boys are boys and girls are girls.
Truth exists.
God exists.
Really basic stuff.
And so, of course, you're going to be unhappy and unsettled.
I mean, just at a very basic level, if you tell someone, hey, you have no idea who you really are.
All you are is a bag of feelings and chemicals and emotions.
And if it feels good, do it, whatever that is, betraying whomever you want.
There's no such thing as objective reality.
And when you die, you're going to turn to worm food and take a dirt nap.
Do you think that's going to make someone feel happier or less happy?
I don't think this is exactly rocket science.
Yeah, unfortunately, it's kind of spread into every single corner of American society.
So how much of this, Michael, is now incumbent on conservatives to actually go about fixing, right?
So it's one thing for us to complain about it, but a lot of conservatives will get very uneasy and nervous and say, hold on.
Young people are sad.
Cut corporate taxes.
Young people are cut corporate taxes.
There's got to be another way here.
What would that be for a conservative running for office or someone in power?
It involves building things.
It ties right back into the point you made, which is why I love it.
Seriously, Charlie, I'm not blowing smoke here.
That point you made about the buildings actually is my favorite conservative point I've heard in a long time.
And I listen to a whole lot of commentary because we have to build things.
It's not enough merely to destroy or to debunk or to take down or to criticize.
We actually have to offer an alternative.
And this is where conservatives have been really weak for the past 20 or so years.
We were excellent before that.
Now we're pretty weak.
And you see it really in the free speech debate.
Right now, when we talk about free speech or often even education, conservatives will say, listen, I don't care what you say, only that you have the right to say it.
Or I don't care what you teach, only that you have the right to teach it.
Or I don't care what you think, only that you have the right to think it.
So they're speaking in these really abstract terms.
But the reality is, free speech doesn't mean anything to people who don't have anything to say.
This is the thesis of my book, Speechless, which is my only book with words in it.
You have to articulate a standard.
So take the gender issue because it's so popular right now.
It's so trendy.
Very often you'll hear conservatives say, listen, if a man wants to put on a dress and call himself Sally, that's totally fine.
That's his right.
It's none of my business.
Just don't do it to the kids.
Just don't do it to the toddlers.
Just don't do it to the babies.
I mean, they're going to keep moving that further and further down the line.
And conservatives need, if we are to actually build something, we need to make substantive claims.
We have to say, no, sir, you don't have a right to put on a dress.
You don't have a right to call yourself Sally.
Sally is a girl's name.
You don't have a right to use the girl's bathroom.
You don't have a right to play on the sports team.
Not just because you're going to take a trophy away from some pen swimming girl, but because it's wrong and there's truth and we can know about it and we can count on it.
There is a word that the modern left would have put into the Declaration, and that would have been the pursuit of your happiness.
And it's not there.
It's the pursuit of happiness.
It's a big difference.
That's right.
To promote the general welfare, as we see it.
Yeah, that's right.
My truth, it's my happiness, okay?
If I want to go chemically castrate my nine-year-old, it makes me happy.
Well, actually, the founding fathers believed in an absolute standard of virtue that you must look at and study and aim for.
It's not the pursuit of your own moral happiness.
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Oligarchy vs Republic in Tech 00:05:15
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Michael, I don't know what your thoughts are on this.
What's your take on Elon Musk's bid to take over Twitter?
I absolutely love it, as do most conservatives, I think.
And I hope that it works.
I really hope that it works.
I want anything that will bring our extremely corrupt ruling class down a few pegs, I'm in favor of just about.
But even if it doesn't work, even if the Twitter board is able to fend off the hostile takeover, Musk has already succeeded at one very important thing, which is that he has exposed the depth of the corruption in Twitter and I think broadly in our ruling class.
The fact that the Twitter board of directors is willing to tank the value of their stock to actually harm the shareholders just to stop Elon Musk from letting Charlie Kirk tweet again and letting the Babylon bee tweet again really shows you how desperate they are.
Two, the fact that now that Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter, the members of the Twitter Board of Directors actually don't own very much stock at all of Twitter.
And one, it opens them up to legal liabilities if the shareholders want to sue the board of directors.
But two, it shows you that these people don't really care about the product.
They certainly don't really use the product.
They're just trying to control what we say.
And then three, you've got the institutional investors here.
Until Musk tried to take over Twitter, it actually never occurred to me, even me, I'm pretty plugged into all this stuff.
It never occurred to me to ask who owns Twitter.
Oh, BlackRock owns Twitter.
Oh, State Street?
Oh, Saudi Arabia owns Twitter?
That's kind of weird.
And so you're looking at major institutional investors in the case of something like a BlackRock that is pushing very woke policies on America's corporations.
It's called ESG, Environmental, Social, and Governments Policies.
So these investors are wielding your money.
They're wielding your retirement money to push and pressure these CEOs to promote leftist policies.
And then you've got Saudi Arabia.
Well, why is Saudi Arabia here so worried about an Elon Musk takeover?
Maybe it's because they've got vested political interests in the way that information is spread throughout the U.S.
This is not merely a question of technology or private enterprise.
We live in a republic.
At least we used to.
We're supposed to live in a republic.
In a republic, speech is not just one aspect of the political order.
It's the whole damn thing.
That's how we govern each other.
We speak to one another, we debate, we persuade one another.
So if you have a small number of oligarchs controlling 90% plus of speech in America, and don't forget, Twitter is the smallest one of all of these big tech platforms, then functionally speaking, we no longer live in a republic, but something more akin to an oligarchy.
Yeah, and that's what's so ironic about this, right?
Is that the richest person coming in to buy a company would actually be closest to an oligarchy, but it's less like a hostile takeover, more like a rescue mission and a liberation.
And so it's, and this is what I love about it, is that I don't care if it, I don't like what's happening.
I care more about whether or not we are going to win or not.
Closing thought here, Michael.
Closing thought, I am cheering Musk on.
We're talking about how important it is for free speech.
We're talking about how important it is for conservatives, not just Charlie Kirk, not just the Babylon B, Donald Trump.
They booted him out of the public square when he was the duly elected sitting president.
So it's a really important matter.
But just as one final add-on, I think it's really important that Twitter finally pursue some diversity and inclusion and equity.
I think if Twitter were being run by a notable African American such as Elon Musk, that would just be the cherry on top of the delicious Sunday of this takeover.
Diversity, equity, inclusion.
I think they need ideological diversity, and they need to have, I think, Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter on the board of Twitter.
Michael Knowles, you're the best.
Subscribe to his podcast.
Buy his book.
The one that has words in it.
The one that doesn't is also equally hilarious.
Reasonable for Democrats.
New York Times bestseller, and there's no words in it.
I'm still salty and bitter.
I didn't think of that idea first.
Michael Knowles, thank you so much.
God bless you.
Great to be with you always, Charlie.
Thanks.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast and get involved with Turning Point USA Today.
Thank you so much for listening.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
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