The Charlie Kirk Show - Why the Smartest People on the Left Are Leaving with Greg Gutfeld
Aired: 2022-07-30
Duration: 40:18


=== Turning Point USA Support (02:43) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, happy Saturday.
[00:00:01]  It is Greg Gutfeld who is here live from his speech at Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.
[00:00:07]  Get involved with Turning PointUSA at tpusa.com.
[00:00:10]  That is tpusa.com.
[00:00:12]  So if you'd like to support the Charlie Kirk show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:16]  That is charliekirk.com/slash support and get involved with Turning Point USA Today and start a high school or college chapter at tpusa.com.
[00:00:25]  The great Greg Gutfeld and I have a couple laughs live in front of thousands of students at our Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.
[00:00:32]  Buckle up.
[00:00:32]  Here we go.
[00:00:34]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:36]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:38]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:41]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:44]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:45]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:46]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:00:55]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:04]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:06]  How many years have I been telling you about Relief Factor?
[00:01:08]  Producer Andrew's right here doing an Iron Man thanks to Relief Factor.
[00:01:11]  And truth is, I know there are millions of people.
[00:01:13]  In fact, some say over 100 million people struggling with some kind of pain, maybe from exercise or just getting older.
[00:01:18]  That can do it, getting older, which is why I'm so impressed with the people at relieffactor.com.
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[00:01:33]  So here's the deal: if you're struggling with back pain, neck pain, shoulder, hip, or knee pain, even general muscle aches and pain, then I'm suggesting you order their three-week quick start, still discounted, only $19.95.
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[00:02:03]  So, Greg, speaking of your show, you know, it's only been, what, about a year, year and a half?
[00:02:08]  Is that right?
[00:02:08]  Yeah, I think it started April 2021, right?
[00:02:11]  Yeah, so it's a year and three months.
[00:02:12]  And it was a little bit of a risk that Fox took, but you are just slaughtering your competition.
[00:02:20]  And it's been weird because, you know, we waited for the right time to do it, and it just made sense.
[00:02:27]  Like, I pretty much knew this was going to happen, but I couldn't say it.
[00:02:31]  And so did Suzanne Scott, who's the CEO.
[00:02:35]  We were talking about it, and we're going like, it just makes sense because when you see a hole and you just know you can fill it, it's like, it's like it was right there in front of us.

=== The Risk of Comedy (15:05) ===

[00:02:43]  So, you know, and the best, I got to tell you.
[00:02:47]  So I had Adam Carolla on a couple of days ago, and then I did his podcast.
[00:02:51]  Great guy.
[00:02:52]  And we were talking about how you know when something is successful in Hollywood, they don't talk about it because it is so damaging to their psyche.
[00:03:02]  It is so humiliating.
[00:03:04]  So he goes like, he goes, they pretend that my show doesn't exist because if it, because they just, it's like they can't look in the mirror and see their own failure because that's what my show is.
[00:03:15]  My show reminds them of their failure.
[00:03:18]  It's a 60-minute reminder of how irrelevant they've become.
[00:03:21]  Yeah.
[00:03:21]  And so, Greg, but I think it actually, we can go a little deeper here.
[00:03:24]  What is instructive about the success of your program that could be applied in just fighting against a lot of this boring and banal and overly radical commentary happening on television?
[00:03:36]  Well, I think it helps to be funny and don't take yourself too seriously.
[00:03:44]  I think that maybe, you know, 70% of the content in my show is ridicule and sarcasm directed at me.
[00:03:54]  And the best fun that we have on that show is when Tyrus and Kat turn on me or the get they're great or guests so it doesn't look like you don't want to end I think we're past that that that cable stereotype of the angry right-winger.
[00:04:11]  You know, you need to tell those people to go home.
[00:04:15]  That's dead.
[00:04:16]  It's we will we are winning by having fun.
[00:04:19]  And I think I mentioned this before the last time I was here.
[00:04:23]  The Dean Wormer effect.
[00:04:25]  And it's like, I don't know if you got, you guys are so young.
[00:04:27]  I feel so old.
[00:04:29]  Hey, there's a movie that came out in 1979 called Animal House.
[00:04:34]  There you go.
[00:04:35]  All right.
[00:04:35]  So the bad character in there is Dean Wormer.
[00:04:38]  He's the Dean.
[00:04:39]  And that's how they portrayed in all movies, Republicans and conservatives, the evil dean and the animal house was wild.
[00:04:46]  So about 20 years ago, I wrote an article called the Dean Wormer effect, which my desire was to flip it so that the conservative becomes the animal house and the left becomes Dean Wormer.
[00:04:58]  That's what you're seeing now.
[00:04:59]  You're seeing just like a contagious humorlessness sweeping across the left.
[00:05:06]  Meanwhile, on the right, everybody's having a good time.
[00:05:11]  I mean, as crazy, as crazy as the last, I don't know, six years have been, you got to admit, it's also been fun.
[00:05:19]  It's been more fun than not fun is the way I look at it.
[00:05:23]  Well, and Greg, it should be the opposite, right?
[00:05:25]  I mean, they control everything.
[00:05:27]  Right.
[00:05:27]  And they're miserable.
[00:05:28]  So that, yeah, they're in control and they've never been unhappier.
[00:05:32]  Why do you think that is?
[00:05:34]  Well, you know, I'll tell you what.
[00:05:35]  I think there's one telling thing.
[00:05:38]  What happens when the smartest people on your side leave?
[00:05:43]  And this is a, I was talking about this with Corolla.
[00:05:46]  So what's happening is you look at like Russell Brand, who is a brilliant, yeah, brilliant guy.
[00:05:53]  He was hardcore left.
[00:05:55]  He could, I mean, I'm going to talk about the left wingers that scared me that I didn't want to be in an argument with.
[00:06:03]  Russell Brand, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi.
[00:06:07]  These are guys like in the aughts.
[00:06:09]  Is that what you say?
[00:06:09]  The aughts, 2000s?
[00:06:13]  I don't want to debate these people.
[00:06:15]  I think they would eat my lunch.
[00:06:17]  But now we're all on the same side.
[00:06:20]  And it's because they see the folly of their own side.
[00:06:24]  So that's one thing that's happening is that they're losing good people.
[00:06:29]  And I mean, Glenn Greenwald is like a treasure.
[00:06:32]  He's amazing.
[00:06:34]  Russell Brand's podcasts are like 5.2 million.
[00:06:37]  And he sounds, he doesn't sound much different than me, but he's just got a better accent and better hair.
[00:06:45]  So what's happening?
[00:06:45]  This is a really, this is also, I'm going to steal this from Corolla because he's never said it in public.
[00:06:51]  So I'm going to say it first.
[00:06:54]  When all your smart people are leaving, why are they leaving?
[00:06:58]  Because they can, because they have talent.
[00:07:00]  So it's just like, let's say you and I are working at Teen Vogue.
[00:07:07]  Okay?
[00:07:07]  You and me are editors at Teen Vogue.
[00:07:09]  I'm an editor at Teen Vermog.
[00:07:10]  Yes.
[00:07:10]  Okay.
[00:07:11]  The most woke piece of crap ever made.
[00:07:15]  So, and it's called Teen Vogue.
[00:07:17]  I love this thing.
[00:07:17]  So imagine you and I are editors there.
[00:07:20]  You're really good.
[00:07:22]  I'm crappy.
[00:07:23]  So you're really good.
[00:07:24]  I'm really crappy.
[00:07:26]  And you're like, Greg, I'm going to quit.
[00:07:29]  I think I'm going to go do something on my own.
[00:07:31]  Maybe start something or do a sub stack or something.
[00:07:34]  And I'm like, no, man, you can't do that.
[00:07:37]  You can't do that.
[00:07:38]  And you go, no, I don't want to do anything.
[00:07:39]  No, no, no, no, you can't because I'm untalented.
[00:07:42]  I have to stay at Teen Vogue because I'm mediocre and I have to do the woke stuff because without that, I don't have the talent to leave.
[00:07:51]  But you have this talent stack.
[00:07:52]  You can go.
[00:07:53]  So you go up, and that's what's happening.
[00:07:55]  So now, what does that do?
[00:07:57]  It creates a concentrated kernel of wokeness in the product that you left because the only people left are the mediocre woke people.
[00:08:09]  Look at Sports Illustrated.
[00:08:10]  You know, I grew up with Sports Illustrated.
[00:08:13]  It was about sports.
[00:08:14]  Remember that?
[00:08:15]  Now I don't even know what it is.
[00:08:18]  And it's why all their best writers have left and replaced by their kind of like these weird woke automatons.
[00:08:26]  Is that the word automaton?
[00:08:27]  I can't remember.
[00:08:28]  But anyway, so that's happening.
[00:08:30]  When you're seeing it on late night TV, their shows, people are leaving.
[00:08:35]  You're seeing it in magazines, all pop culture.
[00:08:37]  It's all falling apart.
[00:08:38]  Meanwhile, it's hard for places like my show to get talent because they know they're going to get blacklisted.
[00:08:48]  This happens, like I, now comedians are finally coming on to do my show, but they like, let's say a comedian is going to do a show.
[00:08:57]  His, you know, his other comedian friends or agents, he may not end up, he may not be able to do Fallon now or Kimmel because he went and did Gutfell.
[00:09:06]  Now that's changed mainly with the podcast environment.
[00:09:08]  You can go and do Rogan, you can do anything, but you'll see that there's fewer of those comedians on those shows.
[00:09:14]  In fact, I know, like, take somebody like Jamie Lissow, who's on my show, amazing guy, selling out places.
[00:09:20]  You don't see him on other shows.
[00:09:22]  And that's because they blacklist.
[00:09:23]  And so you got to think about you're not getting, you know, a lot of the talent can't come over to me until other people go first.
[00:09:30]  Yeah, and so it's a really smart point where you say the smartest people on the left are leaving because they can.
[00:09:36]  And also, but they're leaving because the people are demanding something different than these institutions.
[00:09:42]  That's the other exactly.
[00:09:44]  Yes.
[00:09:45]  And some of it is just what you would call reason, you know, just logic, truth.
[00:09:51]  But most important, humor.
[00:09:54]  You know, if imagine working at these places and how insufferable those co-workers are.
[00:10:01]  How when you go to work, you have to think about what you say all the time.
[00:10:05]  You might be called into HR for things you have no idea.
[00:10:09]  And this is another sad thing about, this is where I was wrong on something.
[00:10:14]  And I know that it's rare.
[00:10:18]  But it does happen even to me that I thought that all the woke people in college campuses, when they graduated, they would never get jobs.
[00:10:31]  I just assume they wouldn't.
[00:10:33]  Because who would hire such crazy people?
[00:10:35]  Turns out human resources does.
[00:10:39]  And there are other, I mean, it's really, I'm not talking about Fox excluded, of course.
[00:10:46]  But I mean, that's where they go and they create these crazy policies.
[00:10:52]  And it's suffocating.
[00:10:55]  Well, and they have a disproportionate amount of power.
[00:10:58]  And by the way, we love all of you that might work in HR.
[00:11:00]  Yes.
[00:11:01]  However, it seems as if there is an activism that is embedded in HR departments where the product is almost a political purpose.
[00:11:11]  Yes, yeah.
[00:11:11]  And not only that, when you're making the product, it has to appeal to the employees' emotional needs.
[00:11:19]  It's like if I don't, when I go to work, my feelings better not be hurt.
[00:11:24]  Or I'm going home.
[00:11:26]  When did that happen?
[00:11:27]  Like when your dad and mom went to work, they went to work.
[00:11:31]  You show up at 9 a.m., you start thinking about what you're going to have for lunch.
[00:11:35]  That's what you do at work.
[00:11:36]  There's something, there's something rewarding going on.
[00:11:39]  Then after you eat, you're kind of lazy.
[00:11:42]  Think about it, there's no, like when I was, when I was a kid, there was no email.
[00:11:46]  You actually, you couldn't scroll on Twitter.
[00:11:48]  You actually had to do your work.
[00:11:50]  But I mean, nobody was like thinking about like, oh my God, Steve just hurt my feelings by mispronouncing misgendering me.
[00:11:58]  It's like, who cares?
[00:12:00]  This is work.
[00:12:02]  You know?
[00:12:03]  So it's like.
[00:12:05]  Yes.
[00:12:10]  So that's a delusion that is being fed by cowards who they don't know.
[00:12:19]  I think they are scared of the snake eating them, right?
[00:12:23]  The snake of wokeism will turn on itself.
[00:12:26]  And people in HR actually might be protected by sending out empathetic emails telling you what this special day is.
[00:12:34]  And we're going to be doing this for these people and this for those people.
[00:12:38]  And we're going to slice everybody up, you know, like a pie of identity.
[00:12:43]  And they think that's going to save them.
[00:12:45]  And one of the things that I think some conservatives got wrong, and I certainly underestimated this, was that there were going to be limits that somehow they would say, okay, we've gone too far.
[00:12:55]  So for example, the Oregon government, the Oregon Health Department recently, the health department, they were going to have an urgent meeting about monkeypox and about BA.5.
[00:13:07]  Did you see, you probably saw this story.
[00:13:09]  And they sent out an email saying, we're very sorry.
[00:13:12]  We need to delay this meeting because urgency is a white supremacist value.
[00:13:18]  Yeah, I think I did that.
[00:13:19]  I think I did that as a monologue.
[00:13:22]  And it is the most insulting thing to blacks to say, you know, and it indulges the racist stereotype that certain groups of people are lazy.
[00:13:33]  It's like they don't take time seriously.
[00:13:37]  I mean, how awful is that?
[00:13:39]  If I were a minority in that department, I would have kicked a door in and demanded of, that's not just hurting people's feelings.
[00:13:48]  That's actually detrimental to the workplace to say, you know what?
[00:13:53]  Actually, I just wouldn't show up for work.
[00:13:55]  I go, I got to take my time.
[00:13:56]  Well, but I was on the way to work and then I decided to go for a walk.
[00:13:59]  But also, this is not the organ transgender department.
[00:14:04]  This is the health department.
[00:14:06]  And in the email chain, they're dealing with an urgent health matter.
[00:14:09]  And they say we can't deal with the urgent health matter because urgency itself is a white supremacist value.
[00:14:16]  I'm waiting for the day.
[00:14:17]  And again, this is why the Babylon Bee is so unbelievably brilliant.
[00:14:21]  Because you cannot decipher between the Babylon Bee headline and what's happening in the New York Times.
[00:14:30]  I'm just waiting for the FEMA press release.
[00:14:33]  Hurricane incoming.
[00:14:35]  No need to be urgent.
[00:14:36]  Yes.
[00:14:36]  Or else you're a KKK member.
[00:14:38]  Yes, no rush, no rush.
[00:14:40]  You may die, but you'll be crazy.
[00:14:43]  Yes, exactly.
[00:14:45]  I hate the Babylon Bee for reasons that they might be funnier than me.
[00:14:50]  And that is a problem.
[00:14:53]  But you know what's interesting going back to the left, what's happening to the left, as the Babylon Bee gets funnier and funnier, what's less funny?
[00:15:00]  The onion.
[00:15:02]  The onion actually did, they actually now kind of do serious stuff.
[00:15:06]  And I'm like, why, what happened?
[00:15:07]  And it's like, you know, some things just we just can't joke about.
[00:15:10]  Even the onion, like the Roe v. Wade thing, and we can't even joke about that.
[00:15:14]  You know, and so then they just like trash somebody, whatever.
[00:15:16]  Meanwhile, the Babylon Bee has flipped the script.
[00:15:20]  You know, now the onion is Dean Wormer.
[00:15:22]  They're Animal House.
[00:15:23]  And they're really sweet, smart people.
[00:15:26]  I mean, who would have thought that a Christian website is funnier than all the cool atheists?
[00:15:35]  And Greg, you're onto something here of kind of a through line, though.
[00:15:39]  Your show, Rogan, Russell Brand, you know, humor and comedy, not taking yourself too seriously.
[00:15:47]  But if you were to have the 10 commandments of leftism, which again, 10 commandments biblical, they would never believe in such a thing.
[00:15:54]  Like number three shall be, thou shalt take thyself seriously.
[00:15:58]  Is that you must value your own smugness.
[00:16:01]  Right.
[00:16:02]  And it's something that Bill Maher said, because you've also watched his content change.
[00:16:07]  And I've talked to, I knew a couple of people on the staff, and they're really smart, clever.
[00:16:13]  Bill Maher said, the left is creating the content for them.
[00:16:19]  It's that like somebody's got to make fun of this stuff because it's worthy of being made fun of.
[00:16:24]  And now he's finally doing it.
[00:16:25]  He could have probably started in 2001, 2002.
[00:16:30]  It would have been helpful.
[00:16:31]  But you know what?
[00:16:32]  Better late than never.
[00:16:33]  I mean, he, look, he was trying to be anti-racist.
[00:16:35]  He took his time.
[00:16:38]  It took his time.
[00:16:39]  It took him 20 years.
[00:16:40]  It took him 20 years.
[00:16:42]  And so, Greg, we're seeing this kind of new media surge, and they are ignoring it.
[00:16:48]  It's almost the confirmation of silence, as Corolla, as you said that.
[00:16:52]  And that's kind of the award ceremony, the Oscars of getting the award is when they don't mention you at all.
[00:16:57]  Exactly.
[00:16:58]  It's so fun.
[00:16:59]  It's like they had Emmy nominations for all the shows that I'm just destroying.
[00:17:05]  But it's like, what would you rather have, an Emmy or an audience?
[00:17:08]  I'll take the audience.
[00:17:14]  So, Greg, wokeism, I think, we know it's a huge problem.
[00:17:18]  It's in the military.
[00:17:19]  It's all across.
[00:17:20]  But to kind of continue on this theme, and then I want to get a little bit practical because nothing is as difficult as what we're actually saying, which is, hey, you, go be funny against the left.
[00:17:31]  Because they, well, how do I be funny?
[00:17:33]  And so in some ways, it actually happens upon itself.
[00:17:36]  Mockery and ridicule becomes very easy when they present it.
[00:17:40]  But when we look at kind of this mission, which is to defeat wokeism, which I agree, that is Greenwald, that is Rubin, and that is all these really smart people that are now talking about it.

=== Writing Your First Book (04:42) ===

[00:17:49]  How do we actually go about doing that?
[00:17:51]  Well, I think that, I mean, obviously, you got to do your homework.
[00:17:55]  I mean, there are people that are just naturally funny.
[00:17:58]  You know, I include myself.
[00:18:00]  I'm kidding.
[00:18:01]  I'm joking.
[00:18:02]  Or am I?
[00:18:03]  I don't know.
[00:18:03]  But you got to do your homework.
[00:18:06]  You got to keep an eye out for the absurdity on, and there's so much of it.
[00:18:13]  And then just start writing.
[00:18:14]  And remember, it's like overcoming, it's the hardest part is to overcome that fear of failure.
[00:18:21]  And I mean, I had it.
[00:18:22]  I mean, I remember when I was 25, like I had a, I could barely write advertising copy because I just didn't, I didn't like have the confidence.
[00:18:32]  But once you just start writing and you start sharing it, even if it's, you can, there's so many places to share stuff now that you have, you can, you can get good in the middle of the night.
[00:18:42]  I mean, like I did.
[00:18:44]  I mean, I was, when I started doing Red Eye, that was in the middle of the night.
[00:18:46]  Nobody was watching it, but I did it every single day until finally I knew how to like pretty much command a show, make it move quickly.
[00:18:56]  So I think the first thing to do is to is to do your homework, read, read about the idiocy, make notes when you have ideas.
[00:19:03]  And pretty soon, if you start making notes, it's really easy to construct an article.
[00:19:12]  This is what I do in the morning or whatever.
[00:19:14]  You see how many notes I have, right?
[00:19:18]  And then I'll go home and I go, I got to write a monologue.
[00:19:21]  And then I look at my notes and I go, crap, it's already written.
[00:19:24]  I just have to like, and then you flesh it out.
[00:19:27]  So it's like, I think the thing is you have to overcome this mistake that you're climbing a mountain and you're not.
[00:19:33]  You're not.
[00:19:34]  You're basically just taking one step.
[00:19:37]  It's kind of like exercise.
[00:19:38]  Like, let's say you're sitting, this is an old Scott Adams thing.
[00:19:42]  You're sitting and You don't want to go to the gym, but you're sitting on the couch.
[00:19:49]  The first thing you try to do is you go, well, what if I just move my arm?
[00:19:52]  You know, just move my arm.
[00:19:53]  What if I just stand up?
[00:19:55]  You know, what if I just walk?
[00:19:57]  Maybe I should just put on, and the next step is maybe I should just put on my gym clothes.
[00:20:01]  And then you put on your gym clothes and you go, well, you know what?
[00:20:04]  I'm still not going to the gym.
[00:20:06]  But you take things incrementally.
[00:20:08]  And pretty soon, by the time you're at the gym, you go, well, maybe I'll go in, you know?
[00:20:14]  And then you go in, you know, maybe I'll just do 10 minutes.
[00:20:17]  That's how you write.
[00:20:18]  That's how you do everything incrementally until finally, it's done.
[00:20:22]  And you're like, wow, how did I do that?
[00:20:24]  People always ask me how you write books.
[00:20:26]  That's how you write books.
[00:20:28]  You think you can't write a book?
[00:20:30]  That's BS.
[00:20:32]  Any one of you can write a book if you just stop thinking about it as a book.
[00:20:37]  Right?
[00:20:38]  Now, I'm not talking about a diary where you go, I woke up and I thought about, you know, whatever.
[00:20:42]  It is like, you know, seeing an idea or a story, writing down your thoughts, and just all of a sudden you're going to have a book.
[00:20:49]  But you have, if you see something as a mountain or a 300 or 250-page book, you're going to get nowhere.
[00:20:56]  You start out and you take those little steps.
[00:20:58]  You move the arm, you stand up, you put on your clothes.
[00:21:02]  It's kind of like the Jordan Peterson thing, you know, make you make your bed, right?
[00:21:06]  And so, Greg, you actually touched on something.
[00:21:09]  A lot of people here are ambassadors, social media influencers, but I think writing is becoming a lost art.
[00:21:15]  Talk about how writing for you was so important.
[00:21:18]  Obviously, it's how you got your start, but it seems like a lot of people want to be in front of the camera.
[00:21:22]  But writing has a, it's a, it works a totally different part of the brain.
[00:21:26]  And in fact, it helps all the other communication skills.
[00:21:29]  People, okay, I could go on forever on this one.
[00:21:31]  So, but at the end, the reason why I have so many notes is because it exercises the parts of the brain that you're using your manual dexterity, you're actually doing something physical while you're doing something mental.
[00:21:48]  When you put those things together, it actually makes the thought stronger and you're better at projecting it.
[00:21:56]  The best people on television are great writers.
[00:22:00]  And you're right.
[00:22:01]  And it's really obvious.
[00:22:03]  It's very obvious when you see somebody who's kind of glib, but not deep.
[00:22:08]  That's not a writer.
[00:22:09]  Like a Matt Lauer, right?
[00:22:12]  He's in my head because I just saw that old clip of him and Tom Cruise.
[00:22:15]  That's like, it's, you know, how Tom Cruise goes, you're glib.
[00:22:19]  And I said, and I go, yeah, he nailed it.
[00:22:22]  People, like, you can tell, you can tell writers.
[00:22:25]  And also, writing is something you, once you learn it, it's always something you can fall back on.

=== Glib vs Deep Writers (02:28) ===

[00:22:32]  It's part of that talent stack.
[00:22:34]  And so let's say in any part, any job that you take, the edge that you will have over everybody by being a solid writer is immense.
[00:22:43]  Even if it's just even writing emails, intercorporate emails, newsletters, whatever, the fact that you can do it.
[00:22:51]  This is how I hired people.
[00:22:53]  Like on Red Eye, I hired Andy Levy because of his, he left comments on my Huffington Post blog.
[00:23:02]  And I was going, who is this person?
[00:23:04]  He was like, I think his name was a cranky insomniac.
[00:23:07]  And I go, wow, this guy can write.
[00:23:09]  And I mean, he's the only, I think he's the only person in history that got a job from leaving comments on a blog.
[00:23:17]  I mean, how is that possible?
[00:23:19]  So the thing is, that is a, it's a terrific thing.
[00:23:22]  Like, if you just do TV and you get canceled or whatever, what are you going to do?
[00:23:27]  You know, you're going to sell timeshares like Army Hammer.
[00:23:32]  But, or you go, or you're going to volunteer for the fire department like Chris Cuomo.
[00:23:36]  Or you can do Relief Factor ads.
[00:23:38]  By the way, how is Relief Factor?
[00:23:40]  Hey, it's 100% drug-free.
[00:23:41]  I know.
[00:23:43]  Yeah.
[00:23:43]  I still don't know what it is, but I love it.
[00:23:47]  I love it.
[00:23:48]  I love how Relief Actor has adopted the colors of the O'Reilly factor.
[00:23:54]  So when it comes on, it's going, is this a show or is this a product?
[00:23:57]  It's both.
[00:24:00]  I hear when you rub it on, you get 70% more.
[00:24:02]  It's not an ointment.
[00:24:05]  I know, it's pills.
[00:24:06]  It's capsule.
[00:24:07]  Supplements.
[00:24:08]  Supplements, exactly.
[00:24:09]  People ask me, you put it in a shake?
[00:24:11]  No, no, no.
[00:24:13]  We all got to be self-deprecating.
[00:24:15]  Exactly.
[00:24:15]  In fact, I make, it's one of the things that we talked, like, I make jokes on Fox about, you know, how much gold you have in your safe, William Devane.
[00:24:24]  Make fun of hello, what's my little pillow?
[00:24:28]  I keep calling it my little pillow.
[00:24:29]  My little pillow?
[00:24:31]  Talk about a great idea.
[00:24:33]  My little pillow.
[00:24:35]  I'm sure he's watching this somewhere.
[00:24:37]  He's going to go, why did I think of my little pillow?
[00:24:39]  It's a pillow shaped like a pony.
[00:24:43]  A pillow shaped like a pony.
[00:24:47]  I just made that guy $100 million.
[00:24:51]  But you know what?
[00:24:52]  He probably could get sued for copyright infringement, right?
[00:24:55]  I don't know, my little pony, my little pillow.
[00:24:58]  You can do that.
[00:24:58]  It's a different word.

=== Mike Lindell Pillow Promo (07:26) ===

[00:25:00]  We love Mike Lindell, by the way.
[00:25:02]  What a great American patriot.
[00:25:03]  He's terrific.
[00:25:06]  Good guy.
[00:25:07]  Hey, just promo code KirkMyPillow.com for all of you.
[00:25:11]  Keep it score at home.
[00:25:13]  25% off.
[00:25:14]  So, Greg, this is, I can't remember what the heck we were talking about.
[00:25:18]  But, oh, yeah, writing.
[00:25:20]  So, but this is, we hire a lot of people, and the skill that is hardest for us to find are people that have done the work to refine their writing.
[00:25:28]  Yeah.
[00:25:28]  And now, there are people that are naturally good writers.
[00:25:31]  Like, for example, Tucker's a phenomenal writer.
[00:25:34]  Yes, he is.
[00:25:34]  You can tell that with his monologues.
[00:25:36]  Yes.
[00:25:37]  You know, his monologues are.
[00:25:38]  Well, okay, the key to good writing is you got to look everything.
[00:25:44]  You got to look at, like, when you're done, when you write the article, it's just starting.
[00:25:48]  You know, the real fun is in the editing.
[00:25:51]  It's so much fun to chip away and see how many, it's like, it's like name that tune.
[00:25:58]  Like, oh, God, that's an old reference.
[00:26:00]  But it's, you want to get it down to the fewest words possible while expressing the sharpest point.
[00:26:08]  So the worst kind of writer, like, this is the one problem with Substack now.
[00:26:12]  Some people can't stop writing and they forgot how to edit.
[00:26:16]  But you got to like.
[00:26:18]  It just puts, no, I'm not reading this.
[00:26:22]  I don't have the time to read this.
[00:26:24]  There was a guy that wrote a huge piece trashing me, which I tend to enjoy, but I got bored.
[00:26:29]  I got bored with hearing my own name, which is so rare.
[00:26:33]  But so it's like, so you look at it like a block.
[00:26:37]  So you got this block of stone and you just start chipping away at it.
[00:26:40]  And it's so much.
[00:26:41]  I even, I'm so weird.
[00:26:43]  This is very weird.
[00:26:45]  When I'm doing, when I'm editing my monologue, so I'll write a monologue.
[00:26:47]  Let's say I send it to the production staff in the morning at about 9 a.m.
[00:26:53]  And I send it to my buddy Nick, who writes some of the jokes.
[00:26:56]  And it will be about, let's say it'll be like eight minutes long.
[00:27:02]  I want it under four.
[00:27:03]  So when it comes to, then some jokes are added, and then it's like 10 minutes, and I get in, and then I just sit there, and I must go, I must do 100 edits, like I mean, 100 reads, just like this.
[00:27:15]  Like I'm like a weirdo.
[00:27:16]  I'm like a goldfish just staring at it.
[00:27:18]  And then I get so weird that even multi-syllabic words, I want it down, I want to change that word to a single word.
[00:27:27]  Like apologize, apologize.
[00:27:32]  No, sorry.
[00:27:34]  That's how weird I get because I think really, you wanted to get it as small and as tight as possible because then you're going to get more eyeballs.
[00:27:42]  And it just feels good.
[00:27:44]  It's actually super therapeutic to edit.
[00:27:48]  Editing is more fun than writing.
[00:27:50]  Writing is hard.
[00:27:53]  And the one thing you should remember at your age, it is hard.
[00:27:58]  So don't feel that because it's hard, you can't do it.
[00:28:00]  It's hard for everybody.
[00:28:02]  Even the best writers find it difficult.
[00:28:06]  And then once you're done writing, then you take a break and you sit down and you look at it and you start editing.
[00:28:11]  And editing is fun.
[00:28:13]  You're reading it.
[00:28:14]  How can I make this sentence better?
[00:28:16]  Should there be a joke in there?
[00:28:18]  Did I forget to put a joke at the end of that?
[00:28:20]  Ooh, what if I did this thing?
[00:28:22]  Like, there's a one of my mentors, Mark Bricklin, he was the editor-in-chief of Prevention Magazine and created Men's Health Magazine where I was editor in the late 90s.
[00:28:33]  He had this thing called the hotspot.
[00:28:35]  He's now passed away from COVID.
[00:28:38]  And he had a thing called the hotspot, which meant that in every paragraph in your article, when you're reading it, there has to be something that goes, the reader goes, whoa, I didn't know that.
[00:28:52]  Could be a weird statistic, just an unusual fact, something funny.
[00:28:59]  But if you read it, so the point being, it's an editing technique.
[00:29:04]  If you're reading a paragraph and there's no hotspot in it, it's not so much that you have to add one.
[00:29:10]  Just get rid of the paragraph.
[00:29:12]  Just go, it's gone.
[00:29:13]  No one's going to miss it.
[00:29:15]  No one misses things they don't read.
[00:29:18]  So, like, I have to do this with jokes.
[00:29:20]  I'll go, like, I like this joke, or this joke's too risque.
[00:29:24]  But it's like I realize no one's going to know if it's gone, but you have to make everything interesting.
[00:29:30]  So I want it to, you know, so that's that's the thing.
[00:29:33]  This is valuable advice.
[00:29:34]  I should be charging you.
[00:29:36]  Wait, I am.
[00:29:37]  I am.
[00:29:38]  I almost forgot.
[00:29:40]  So, so, Greg, were you always a good writer?
[00:29:43]  I think that I was very, I was very creative.
[00:29:46]  And yes, I guess I was, but I wasn't, I was a writer, but I wasn't a good writer until I gained confidence.
[00:29:57]  So, writing is creativity plus confidence.
[00:29:59]  The reason I ask, and I just want to hammer this home: if you're looking for what you want to do in life, if you are able to be an above-average writer, it is a universal skill.
[00:30:07]  Even if you work in an HR department, you have to be able to list off people's pronouns and have the hotspot in the paragraph and your disclaimer in the email.
[00:30:16]  The point is, no matter what you do in life, writing will help you.
[00:30:19]  Also, and let's say you are a great writer.
[00:30:22]  Let's say somebody in here is an amazing writer.
[00:30:26]  That's not enough.
[00:30:26]  I'm going to use one of Scott Adams' phrases, which is the talent stack.
[00:30:31]  Develop two other things, right?
[00:30:35]  If you don't rely on the fact that you're a great writer, find two other things.
[00:30:40]  Maybe you take speaking classes.
[00:30:43]  Maybe you join, what's that thing?
[00:30:45]  What's the Toastmasters?
[00:30:47]  I had friends at Toastmasters.
[00:30:48]  I used to make fun of it.
[00:30:49]  But you know what Toastmasters is for?
[00:30:51]  It's to get over the fear of speaking in front of people.
[00:30:56]  There's another, what's the famous book, How to Win Friends?
[00:31:00]  How to Win Friends and Influence People.
[00:31:02]  Yeah, what's the guy's name?
[00:31:04]  Carnegie.
[00:31:05]  Carnegie Courses, right?
[00:31:06]  I never did them.
[00:31:07]  But all of these, these things sound hokey, but they're designed for people who are scared of talking in front of other people.
[00:31:15]  And the people who take these courses, they work.
[00:31:18]  Trust me.
[00:31:19]  So now you're a good writer, and now you can speak in front of people.
[00:31:23]  That's two.
[00:31:24]  Maybe you go to the gym because you want to be presentable, right?
[00:31:28]  You want to be presentable.
[00:31:30]  You don't like, there's a lot of, like, how can you, how can Brian Stelter show up on CNN?
[00:31:35]  How can you get up and go, I'm going to go and present myself like this?
[00:31:39]  Dude, remember that time he took a picture of himself in his underwear during the clampdown shutdown?
[00:31:47]  And he's like, this thing goes, aren't you married?
[00:31:51]  You are embarrassing your wife.
[00:31:53]  Anyway, my point being is: okay, now you have three.
[00:31:56]  You can write, you can present yourself physically, you can speak in public.
[00:32:02]  There you go.
[00:32:03]  Those three things put together create charisma, right?
[00:32:07]  All of a sudden, you're like, who's this person who's in great shape, who can talk a dog off a meat truck, you know?
[00:32:15]  And he writes.
[00:32:19]  That's Jesse Waters.
[00:32:20]  That's Jesse Waters.
[00:32:23]  You're welcome for that.
[00:32:25]  You know what?
[00:32:26]  No, he's good.

=== Building Charisma Skills (06:36) ===

[00:32:27]  He's going to like when Google searches his name, which he does.
[00:32:33]  That'll come up and you know, coming up in a transcript.
[00:32:36]  Charlie Kirk, Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Waters.
[00:32:39]  And he'll go, oh, wow, they said I was a great writer.
[00:32:41]  And then I'm going to just say, he's also a big jerk.
[00:32:44]  So he'll see that as well.
[00:32:47]  And he's using his back surgery as an excuse to get off work on Fridays.
[00:32:53]  During, get this, what a coincidence, during the summer.
[00:32:57]  Never in February.
[00:32:58]  Yeah, he doesn't take the Fridays off for his back in the wintertime.
[00:33:02]  That's the other.
[00:33:03]  Oh, the other thing, if you're going to do anything in television, and the reason for the, we talked about this last year.
[00:33:10]  The reason for the success of the five and why it's failed everywhere else is the introduction of teasing into television.
[00:33:18]  I don't know any other show besides like maybe the Comedy Central Rose, but that's different.
[00:33:23]  That's designed.
[00:33:24]  This is not designed for that.
[00:33:26]  This was a political talk show.
[00:33:28]  They didn't know that when I sat down there 11 years ago, the first thing I did was insult Dana.
[00:33:34]  And then that created chemistry.
[00:33:36]  And then Beckle.
[00:33:38]  All of a sudden, it's like everybody, it shows genuine affection when you make fun of somebody.
[00:33:44]  I love Jessica Tarloff.
[00:33:45]  I adore her.
[00:33:46]  She's so smart and so funny.
[00:33:48]  And I just have to pick on her constantly.
[00:33:51]  Like I'm in third grade and I'm pulling her pigtails.
[00:33:54]  And I think that, like, when you see people not teasing each other, they can't stand each other.
[00:34:01]  You know, when they're just like this, they go, but they could lie.
[00:34:04]  They can go, Charlie, congratulate.
[00:34:07]  You're the best example.
[00:34:07]  Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, when they used to do the traitor, hey, I love your brother.
[00:34:11]  Remember that stuff?
[00:34:12]  I love you.
[00:34:13]  So this is my favorite part.
[00:34:14]  Don Lemon would go to Chris Cuomo, I love you, brother.
[00:34:16]  And he goes, I love you, brother.
[00:34:18]  Then when Cuomo gets fired, the first thing Don Lemon does is stab Chris Cuomo in their meetings.
[00:34:26]  He's like, what did he say?
[00:34:27]  He goes, you know, how did this happen?
[00:34:31]  How did Chris Cuomo get away with so much?
[00:34:33]  Something like that.
[00:34:34]  And it's like, you.
[00:34:35]  I knew you were a fake, but I didn't realize you were this obvious.
[00:34:39]  You know, but anyway, so teasing is also extremely important.
[00:34:42]  So, Greg, can I say one more thing?
[00:34:48]  So I came up with a sentence.
[00:34:50]  I was trying to explain this to a friend of mine, but I think he thought I was drunk.
[00:34:55]  So talk while I'm looking for this.
[00:34:57]  Do you remember your iPhone password, Greg?
[00:34:59]  Yes, I do, but I gotta find it.
[00:35:00]  I said this to myself.
[00:35:02]  I said this to myself last night to do as a one more thing.
[00:35:06]  And okay, hold on.
[00:35:08]  It's gonna be worth it.
[00:35:09]  You are going to like this?
[00:35:10]  All right.
[00:35:11]  This is a light.
[00:35:13]  No, that's me drunk.
[00:35:16]  All right.
[00:35:17]  I can't find it, but I'm going to try to do it for memory.
[00:35:22]  Okay, repeat this after me.
[00:35:24]  Okay, I'm going to say, it's important to be writing on the mountain.
[00:35:32]  All right, this is how 70% of young people say it.
[00:35:35]  It's important to be writing on a mountain.
[00:35:41]  Where the hell did the T's go?
[00:35:44]  What is with this generation and hating the letter T?
[00:35:48]  It's important to be writing on the mountain.
[00:35:54]  Not, it's important.
[00:35:55]  It's like so important to be writing on the mountain.
[00:36:00]  All the Peloton, all the Peloton instructors do not pronounce their T's.
[00:36:07]  When I go to Berkeley, they say, so you're part of Yearning Aunt USA?
[00:36:12]  What are you involved in?
[00:36:13]  I love that.
[00:36:14]  See, that I could look.
[00:36:17]  The combination of vocal fries, the up speak, the missing T.
[00:36:21]  The up is, it's so fake.
[00:36:23]  Yes, it's incredible.
[00:36:24]  If you are escalating your octave as the sentence continues.
[00:36:28]  But you know, the weird thing about the missing T, you will now notice it wherever you go, and you might start doing it.
[00:36:35]  And it drives me crazy because I've done it.
[00:36:38]  Because there's something weird.
[00:36:39]  It has to do with a T before an N. Like, okay, written, T-E-N, important, T-A-N-T, right?
[00:36:48]  A-N-T.
[00:36:49]  And then mountain, T-A-I-N.
[00:36:51]  So you can see, do you see the, do you see, linguistically, no one's pointed this out.
[00:36:56]  This is like a brilliant perception.
[00:36:57]  Thank you, Greg.
[00:37:00]  You people don't care.
[00:37:01]  Why did I even come here?
[00:37:04]  So I'm going to go slightly over time and Greg can penalize me later.
[00:37:11]  I am, it was my fault for looking at my phone.
[00:37:13]  No, it's okay.
[00:37:14]  So super quick, audience of students, 5,000 students across the country, just advice to young people, you know, not just career advice, life advice.
[00:37:22]  Yes.
[00:37:23]  I think the most important is to find a mountain to write on.
[00:37:29]  No, okay.
[00:37:30]  You asked me a question last year, which I thought I answered fairly well, but I always now include it wherever I go.
[00:37:38]  Somebody asked, how do I deal with being outnumbered on campus?
[00:37:43]  Like when I have ideas and I'm in a classroom situation and they're like either mocking me or they're not taking me seriously or they say this, you don't really believe that, do you?
[00:37:58]  How can you believe that?
[00:38:00]  So I wrote down two sentences that I always use.
[00:38:04]  Because this is the advice.
[00:38:05]  When somebody, when you're in that situation, the first one you do, you say, why does it bother you so much that I don't join you?
[00:38:13]  That's the first one.
[00:38:15]  Second one is.
[00:38:18]  Second one is, have you ever asked yourself why I'm willing to make my life more difficult by joining you?
[00:38:26]  It's the most important question.
[00:38:28]  And I tell you, if they think about that too much, they join you.
[00:38:34]  It's never the reverse.
[00:38:36]  Yeah.
[00:38:37]  Why don't you ask yourself, geez, I forgot.
[00:38:41]  It's written down there, Greg.
[00:38:42]  I know, but I said it better than it was here.
[00:38:44]  Why don't you ask yourself why I am making my life more difficult by not agreeing with you or by not joining you?
[00:38:55]  And it's like, I don't think now they might say, because you're stupid.
[00:38:59]  Because you hate yourself.
[00:39:00]  You hate yourself.
[00:39:01]  Because you're racist.

=== Greg's Incredible Impact (01:14) ===

[00:39:04]  There you go.
[00:39:04]  And then you say, F off.
[00:39:06]  That's the third one.
[00:39:07]  See, you notice I censored myself.
[00:39:09]  There you go.
[00:39:10]  You censor yourself.
[00:39:11]  So, everybody, 5,000 students across the country, amazing.
[00:39:15]  Greg, I just want to say you do such a phenomenal job every night.
[00:39:18]  And, you know, it's incredible to see the impact you're making and through comedy and through wittiness and through charm.
[00:39:26]  And I know a lot of our students look up to you.
[00:39:28]  And that is going to be really the way that we defeat the left.
[00:39:31]  Any final thoughts, Greg?
[00:39:32]  No, I think you're doing a great job.
[00:39:34]  And I mean, this didn't exist for me when I was your age.
[00:39:38]  So, I mean, this is, you saw, again, like my show, you saw a hole and you said, I'm going to fill it.
[00:39:44]  And that's exactly what you did.
[00:39:46]  And then he's going to be on my show tomorrow.
[00:39:51]  So be sure and watch.
[00:39:53]  Tell friends about my show.
[00:39:55]  It's growing.
[00:39:56]  And thanks so much, man.
[00:39:58]  Greg Gufeld, everybody.
[00:40:00]  Thank you.
[00:40:05]  Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
[00:40:07]  As always, email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:40:09]  Thank you so much for listening.
[00:40:11]  God bless.
[00:40:14]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.