The Charlie Kirk Show - Bidenomics 101—How 87,000 IRS Agents and ESG will Destroy the American Middle Class
Aired: 2022-08-18
Duration: 27:42


=== IRS Agents and Orwellian Tax Bill (08:26) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody, today's Charlie Kirk Show and Economics-focused episode.
[00:00:03]  ESG, the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS going through with guns.
[00:00:07]  What?
[00:00:08]  Vivek Ramaswamy and Dave Bonson joins us.
[00:00:11]  You can email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com.
[00:00:17]  Start a high school group, start a college group today at tpusa.com.
[00:00:21]  Turningpoint USA is on the front lines for freedom, tpusa.com.
[00:00:26]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:27]  Here we go.
[00:00:28]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:30]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
[00:00:32]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:35]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:38]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:39]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:40]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:00:42]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:00:49]  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.
[00:00:58]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:00]  Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
[00:01:04]  For personalized loan services, you can count on.
[00:01:06]  Go to andrewandtodd.com, the wonderfulandrewandtodd.com.
[00:01:13]  So Inflation Reduction Act, the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents.
[00:01:19]  It didn't really get a lot of coverage.
[00:01:21]  Joe Biden signed it into law yesterday.
[00:01:24]  With us right now is someone who I really respect, and he's an expert of all things economics.
[00:01:30]  David Bonson is the founder and partner and chief investment officer of the Bonson Group and author of the book.
[00:01:35]  There's No Free Launch, 250 Economic Truths.
[00:01:38]  And he just launched a free online video series, Economics101 at Bonson.com.
[00:01:43]  Dave, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:45]  Thanks for having me, Charlie.
[00:01:47]  So Dave, tell us about the Inflation Reduction Act.
[00:01:50]  Will it reduce inflation or is this another Orwellian curveball thrown by our politicians?
[00:01:56]  Yeah, it's a good thing the bill doesn't have anything about false advertising because this is really, as Bernie Sanders said, absurd to call it an Inflation Reduction Act.
[00:02:09]  I'm not one who thinks there's a whole lot it's going to be doing to make the inflation worse because it really almost does nothing at all except for ad IRS agents.
[00:02:19]  It's much more of an Orwellian bill than it is economic.
[00:02:24]  Even the climate issues, there is about 300, 400 billion of corporate welfare to green energy companies.
[00:02:32]  But Manchin, to get his vote, also agreed for more permit approvals for oil and gas companies.
[00:02:39]  So even the greenies in the Democratic Party proved to be a cheap date.
[00:02:43]  It's really a disaster of a bill, and the IRS agent issue is the primary thing that stayed in it.
[00:02:50]  That's so interesting to me.
[00:02:51]  So you're right.
[00:02:52]  And I didn't realize it till you just said it.
[00:02:54]  So the green energy kind of cabal, they get some funding, but it's also if they really hate fossil fuels, but Manchin got his thing.
[00:03:04]  The thing, though, that it seems as if is the big takeaway is 87,000 new IRS agents.
[00:03:11]  Talk about how extraordinary of an increase that is.
[00:03:14]  I mean, for people that don't run businesses, we got some emails, people that emailed us freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:03:20]  Oh, Charlie, just pay your taxes.
[00:03:22]  Who cares?
[00:03:23]  Dave, educate our audience a little bit about the menace that is the IRS.
[00:03:27]  Yeah, you know, Charlie, I work with high net worth investors for a living.
[00:03:31]  My firm manages about $4 billion.
[00:03:34]  And the people who are most aggressive at reducing their taxes are left-leaning clients.
[00:03:40]  They support the taxes, and then they will move heaven and earth to avoid paying them.
[00:03:46]  The people that don't have the options to hire financial firms like mine and accountants and lawyers and so forth are middle-class people.
[00:03:55]  And so all of a sudden you have wage earners that maybe get certain money from Venmo and the IRS starts auditing how much cash they're receiving if they're Uber drivers and other things like that.
[00:04:07]  Well, the IRS people are not the cream of the crop intellectually.
[00:04:11]  Okay, this is just a fact.
[00:04:14]  You don't become IRS agent because you're a brilliant businessman or businesswoman.
[00:04:20]  But what they can make up for with talent deficit is more volume, more people.
[00:04:25]  And that's what this bill seeks to do.
[00:04:27]  It may end up only being 50,000 agents.
[00:04:30]  I love that pushback right now.
[00:04:32]  The Washington Post said, oh, it's not going to be 87,000.
[00:04:36]  But the Biden administration ran a report saying they could afford up to 87,000 more people.
[00:04:41]  So let's say it's only 50,000.
[00:04:44]  All that means is the rest of the money is going to be lost and thrown away in bureaucracy because it is fundamental.
[00:04:50]  Yeah, I mean, it's like saying, okay, it will only be a Yankee stadium full of IRS agents, which is new ones on top of what we already have.
[00:04:58]  And just so you know, because I know you're very charitably minded, you know that I care about these things.
[00:05:02]  I give a lot to my church, Christian schools, 501c3s, which of course Turning Point has.
[00:05:09]  They're going to audit charitable donations, Charlie.
[00:05:11]  That's going to be a huge.
[00:05:12]  Oh, it's going to be a huge part of it.
[00:05:15]  We have no delusions of grandeur of what the police state will try to do.
[00:05:19]  Something tells me that BLM and the alphabet mafia groups aren't going to get that much scrutiny.
[00:05:24]  So, Dave, I want to play a piece of tape here just to kind of add to what you're talking about here.
[00:05:28]  There's this video going around, which appears to be a video that shows new IRS agents training and knocking and entering a room, then arresting two men for conspiracy.
[00:05:38]  It's very creepy.
[00:05:40]  Playcut 66.
[00:06:05]  Well, if you're going to hit it on behind your back, say no.
[00:06:11]  Do you have any other weapons on your hands behind your back?
[00:06:17]  So, Dave, right there, I don't know if you could see that video or not.
[00:06:20]  That is a training video of what seems to be otherwise-looking civilians trained to become IRS agents, not learning how to go through tax returns or how to cite deductions or accounts in the Canary Islands.
[00:06:34]  No, no, no.
[00:06:34]  How to bulldoze a door and say, IRS, you're under arrest for conspiracy.
[00:06:40]  What's going on here?
[00:06:41]  Yeah, obviously, I wish I knew more context and so forth.
[00:06:45]  I can tell you that I don't imagine IRS agents are going to become much more qualified at ATF-style raids than they are right now at auditing offshore accounts.
[00:06:55]  But it's frightening.
[00:06:58]  And even apart from some of the darker places it could go, there is just a fundamental issue here.
[00:07:05]  They do not know that they need this.
[00:07:08]  If they knew they needed it, why wouldn't they just go collect the additional money?
[00:07:13]  They're quantifying the amount of taxes they say are not being paid.
[00:07:17]  But if they know how much is not being paid, why aren't they just collecting it now?
[00:07:22]  It's already resourced.
[00:07:24]  The fact of the matter is they have a tax code that's too darn complicated.
[00:07:28]  Take away the need for IRS agents by having a flatter tax code and a simpler tax code that disincentivizes people to get creative in their taxes.
[00:07:37]  So I'm going to get cynical here for a sec, Dave.
[00:07:39]  But if you have a super complex tax code, then can't you decide who you're going to enforce that complex tax code against?
[00:07:46]  Well, and also who you're going to need to enforce it against, because again, back to my prior point, subsidy, regulation is a subsidy.
[00:07:54]  Okay, I promise you, my multi-millionaire left-wing clients are going to be fine.
[00:08:00]  They're going to get through it.
[00:08:01]  They're going to set up other trusts and do other planning.
[00:08:04]  That's what the financial community is supposed to do is work on tax mitigation.
[00:08:08]  That's our job.
[00:08:10]  The people who won't be fine are the people who don't have the resources to do more complex tax planning.
[00:08:16]  And people whose politics they don't like.
[00:08:18]  Any other parts of the bill, Dave, that you think actually might result in, is there anything meaningful, anything good in this bill at all?

=== MyPillow Promo and Economic Education (02:33) ===

[00:08:26]  And then also tell us about your online courses.
[00:08:28]  Yeah, sure.
[00:08:29]  Real quickly, I do think it's good to get more permit approvals for oil and gas drilling on federal land.
[00:08:35]  I'm really upset that they had to bribe Joe Manchin to do it.
[00:08:39]  But that's one good part of the bill.
[00:08:41]  And I want to be fair about that.
[00:08:42]  I'm pretty objective in the way I talk politics.
[00:08:45]  That's the one good thing.
[00:08:46]  The other bad thing is the price fixing on pharmaceuticals.
[00:08:50]  I think that making Medicare negotiate after 2026 is going to stunt innovation in how we develop new life-saving treatments.
[00:09:01]  And I don't like that part of the bill either.
[00:09:04]  A lot of the principles that drive my political opinions are the things I delve into in this online course, Charlie.
[00:09:11]  Bonson.com has my Bonson Economics 101 course.
[00:09:16]  It's 30 lectures, all free, a full syllabus, dozens of links to readings and videos and things to just simply drive a better understanding of economics, a better understanding of first principles that should influence the way we think about public policy.
[00:09:33]  Can you spell it out for?
[00:09:34]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:09:35]  Bonson is B-A-H-N-S-E-N.
[00:09:39]  And so Bonson, B-A-H-N-S-E-N.com.
[00:09:43]  Unfortunately, my last name wasn't Smith, or we'd be getting even more traffic for the site.
[00:09:48]  That's all right.
[00:09:49]  Those of us with last names of Kirk, you know, I have to laugh.
[00:09:52]  When I do a dinner reservation, they say, how can you spell that?
[00:09:54]  I say, I'm going to another restaurant.
[00:09:56]  You have lost my business.
[00:09:58]  Thank you, Dave.
[00:09:58]  Appreciate it.
[00:09:59]  Thanks, Charlie.
[00:10:03]  Charlie Kirk here.
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=== BlackRock Shareholders vs Pension Funds (15:34) ===

[00:10:59]  This is one of the most important topics in America, period.
[00:11:03]  It is one of the most important yet difficult to grasp at times topics.
[00:11:08]  So we're going to go through it in a step-by-step manner with a subject matter expert who's super smart and he loves the country and he's doing something very important.
[00:11:18]  It's Vivek Ramaswamy, and he joins us right now.
[00:11:21]  He is behind a new effort called Strive to Fight ESG.
[00:11:27]  What exactly is ESG?
[00:11:29]  Vivek, welcome back to the program.
[00:11:31]  Good to see you, Charlie.
[00:11:32]  How are you doing?
[00:11:33]  I'm doing great.
[00:11:33]  First, congratulations.
[00:11:34]  Great interview with Tucker last evening.
[00:11:36]  But let's start at the beginning because some of our audience, they're not really as well-versed in this as I think they would like to be.
[00:11:42]  They're very busy and it can be very confusing.
[00:11:44]  What is ESG and how does that impact normal everyday people?
[00:11:49]  Yeah, so the rise of ESG is basically a way for quasi-governmental actors in the private sector to use your money to advance progressive values in corporate America without you knowing it.
[00:12:01]  So, Charlie, I know that sounds confusing.
[00:12:03]  Here's how it works: is a group of large asset managers, let's name them, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.
[00:12:09]  What they do is they aggregate the money of everyday citizens, probably most of the viewers of this program, and then they use that to buy up shares in public companies in corporate America.
[00:12:19]  And then they tell those companies to adopt diversity, equity, inclusion quota systems for race or gender, carbon caps, climate change measures, scope three emissions caps that most of those everyday citizens don't actually agree with.
[00:12:33]  I think it's a form of financial fraud, actually, Charlie, using someone else's money to advance agendas that the owner of capital, the citizen, disagrees with.
[00:12:42]  That's a problem.
[00:12:43]  No one has yet stepped up to solve it.
[00:12:45]  And my view is: I'm not going to wait for politicians to solve this problem.
[00:12:49]  I think we can solve it through the market.
[00:12:51]  That's why I found it strive.
[00:12:52]  But this is hopefully the beginning of a great uprising of everyday citizens saying that it's not just our voice, it's our money too, that we can use to exercise our voice.
[00:13:02]  And I think that's the power of what we saw, even in the first week since our launch last week.
[00:13:06]  Yeah, I'm enthusiastically behind this.
[00:13:08]  And so, just so everyone understands, ESG creates a corporate social credit score.
[00:13:14]  That's what this is.
[00:13:15]  It's a corporate social credit score that has emphasis on environmental, social, and corporate governance.
[00:13:22]  Vivek, walk us through the three parts.
[00:13:24]  How do they judge that?
[00:13:25]  Who does the judging, for example?
[00:13:27]  What is the criteria?
[00:13:29]  Yeah, so the whole point, Charlie, is there is no fixed criteria.
[00:13:32]  And what does that vagueness do?
[00:13:34]  It gives the people in charge, like Larry Fink, the power to define how he feels like on a daily basis.
[00:13:40]  So here's the irony: actually, they claim to apply environmental standards to American energy companies.
[00:13:46]  So what these ESG-linked asset managers and financial institutions have done is they have used shareholder pressure to cause companies like Exxon and Chevron and great American energy companies to produce less oil, to frack for less natural gas.
[00:14:01]  That has contributed to a generational energy crisis in this country, where people are paying high prices at the pump, people don't have enough access to energy, and American energy companies are doing worse.
[00:14:11]  But you know what the funny part of the story is, Charlie, is that when American energy companies produce less, that allows companies like PetroChina on the other side of the world to fill the gap by producing more oil instead.
[00:14:23]  And then you look at who the top shareholder of Petro China is.
[00:14:26]  It's one of the top shareholders, at least, is none other than BlackRock.
[00:14:30]  And so in a certain sense, some of these ESG-based financial institutions aren't clearly defining ESG.
[00:14:35]  So they can apply these constraints to American companies, but they don't apply those constraints to Chinese companies that they invest in.
[00:14:42]  And the cherry on top, Charlie, is that that's even bad for the environment because American energy companies are actually much cleaner in their production of oil and gas than Russian companies and Chinese companies.
[00:14:52]  Yet the ESG movement, even in the name of environmentalism, that's the E in ESG, are actually making the environment worse, let alone making America less strong and our economy less vibrant as well.
[00:15:03]  So that's the E.
[00:15:04]  The S is all of the stuff you know well, the diversity, equity, inclusion stuff.
[00:15:10]  Yeah, very exactly.
[00:15:11]  Exactly.
[00:15:12]  I mean, I'll just give you one example to make it really tangible, right?
[00:15:15]  I'm going to tell you about Apple.
[00:15:17]  Okay, this is the world's largest company by market cap.
[00:15:19]  Many of us own iPhones, okay?
[00:15:21]  This is a progressive company by most measures.
[00:15:23]  They made large donations to BLM.
[00:15:25]  But this year, Apple had a shareholder proposal on its ballot that called for a racial equity audit at the company.
[00:15:34]  The management and board of the company said, this is a really bad idea.
[00:15:37]  We don't want to do it.
[00:15:38]  The board recommends against voting in favor of this racial equity audit at Apple.
[00:15:45]  BlackRock still votes in favor of it and it gets majority shareholder support because of these ESG-linked asset managers.
[00:15:51]  And it got majority support over the objection of Apple's own board.
[00:15:56]  And keep in mind, this is not some right-wing company we're talking about Apple here.
[00:15:59]  This is the world's largest company that's still recommended against adopting this.
[00:16:02]  So that's the S in the ESG.
[00:16:04]  And then G is just a catch-all for everything else that didn't fit number one and number two.
[00:16:09]  And so they are bullying companies into being like the pseudo-college campus equivalents of hyper-radicalism to give money to all their favorite causes, to all their kind of social causes.
[00:16:22]  So let's talk about what you're doing now to go about fix it.
[00:16:25]  Tell us about Strive and the response you've received since your launch.
[00:16:30]  It's been overwhelming, Charlie.
[00:16:31]  So I found a Strive earlier this year.
[00:16:33]  It's a new asset management firm designed to compete against BlackRock, where the message that Strive delivers to corporate America is to tell companies to get out of politics, to focus exclusively on delivering excellent products and services to people who need them and maximize shareholder value that way rather than focusing on these toxic political agendas.
[00:16:53]  And so we launched our first fund.
[00:16:55]  It was an energy index fund, a U.S. energy index fund that delivers a different voice than BlackRock and the other large asset managers to the U.S. energy industry.
[00:17:04]  The ticker is DRLL, DRIL.
[00:17:08]  It's listed on the New York Stock Exchange as of last week.
[00:17:10]  I had the chance of the privilege of ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange last week.
[00:17:14]  But the message to American energy companies that we deliver as a shareholder is to drill more, to frack more, to do whatever allows you to be most successful as a company over the long run without regard to somebody else's climate change agenda or DEI agenda or social agenda.
[00:17:30]  And I have to say, Charlie, we were overwhelmed by the support we've gotten in the first week alone.
[00:17:36]  Within the first week, we exceeded $100 million.
[00:17:39]  That made that the fastest non-seeded ETF launch of this year.
[00:17:43]  And the part that really inspired me was unlike the other ETF launches that launched with over $100 million in the first week, our volume was driven by tiny trade sizes by comparison, like under $5,000 on average per trade versus millions of dollars for the other ETFs that scored over $100 million in the first week.
[00:18:01]  So this is truly the beginning, I think, of a great uprising of everyday citizens, a positive uprising.
[00:18:07]  You hear about the term the great reset.
[00:18:09]  The great reset refers to the imposition of ESG by dissolving the boundaries between the public and private sector in places like Davos.
[00:18:16]  Well, I think the counterforce to the great reset is the great uprising of everyday citizens who say we had enough of this merger of state power and corporate power, enough of the fascism.
[00:18:26]  But the good news is you don't have to wait till November to vote.
[00:18:29]  You vote every day with your dollars.
[00:18:31]  And being able to use your dollars as a shareholder to deliver this new voice, I hope is going to be really empowering people for Charlie.
[00:18:37]  And hopefully the first week was really just the beginning of a broader movement we're building.
[00:18:41]  Yeah, so we have you for another segment, but the hurdle that has to be overcome has to be these state pension funds.
[00:18:48]  They are the biggest placers of investment, right?
[00:18:51]  The CalPERS, whatever they call it, California pension.
[00:18:54]  I mean, I think it's something like $600 billion.
[00:18:57]  I could be wrong.
[00:18:57]  It's something insane, 100, 200 billion, but look at the number.
[00:19:00]  But they're able to then call the shots a BlackRock, right?
[00:19:03]  So you have teacher unions that then come in to call the shots of BlackRock.
[00:19:08]  So deep down, BlackRock would say, oh, no, we're just taking orders from our pension funds.
[00:19:11]  So you have this kind of incestuous relationship.
[00:19:14]  Vivek, your thoughts.
[00:19:15]  Well, we can continue this conversation for hours, but the long story short is actually the problem, Charlie, is even in the red states.
[00:19:21]  Because it's one thing when California and New York went to BlackRock and States Jr. Vanguard and said, you have to adopt these values and we're using our money to tell you.
[00:19:27]  But the problem that I've seen firsthand is the complacency amongst the deep state within the red states that are really the administrative class that forget the intentions of their citizens.
[00:19:37]  And so you're 100% right.
[00:19:39]  That's really where the action is.
[00:19:40]  And that's where the next step of the.
[00:19:41]  So I have an idea.
[00:19:42]  So Connor's listening.
[00:19:43]  So when Carrie Lake becomes governor of Arizona, she has to say, we're going to put all of our state pension money into Strive.
[00:19:50]  We're going to say we're going to let an asset manager that isn't BlackRock or Vanguard manage the state pension money.
[00:19:57]  Well, I think this is, I hope there's other competitors to Strive because at the end of the day, this is about actually accomplishing the goal.
[00:20:03]  Nobody else stepped up, so that's undoing with Strive.
[00:20:04]  But we'll talk more about what I think is an uprising in the red states that can be positive.
[00:20:11]  Look, rents are going way too high.
[00:20:12]  The rent is too high.
[00:20:14]  If you're renting or a friend or family member, that is, right now is the time to make the move to homeownership.
[00:20:19]  My good buddies, Andrew Del Rey and Tadavakian at Sierra Pacific Mortgage have helped so many people to make that leap from renting and owning.
[00:20:25]  I know what you're saying.
[00:20:26]  Oh, Charlie, rates are too high.
[00:20:27]  Listen, you could always refinance.
[00:20:29]  The problem is, though, why are you giving all of your money to rent when you could be building equity with lots of programs that offer first-time buyers assistance with little to no down payment needed?
[00:20:40]  I encourage you to visit andrewandtodd.com right now.
[00:20:43]  They're beautiful people.
[00:20:44]  They're wonderful.
[00:20:45]  The thing I love about these guys is it's not about the transaction.
[00:20:48]  They're about helping you.
[00:20:49]  They just helped me through a whole problem right now.
[00:20:51]  They were amazing.
[00:20:52]  There's no one like it.
[00:20:53]  And by the way, I dealt with the banks before them.
[00:20:55]  I mean, never again.
[00:20:57]  The banks, the worst.
[00:20:59]  Andrew and Todd made the whole process seamless.
[00:21:02]  They're helping you create a plan to help you reach your goals, whether it's for today or a year from now.
[00:21:07]  With today's still historically low interest rates, it's easier than you think to become a homeowner.
[00:21:11]  I've relied on them and producer Andrew has as well.
[00:21:14]  I highly recommend you take action right now.
[00:21:17]  I use them and you should too.
[00:21:18]  I know them personally.
[00:21:19]  They're patriots.
[00:21:19]  They're Christians.
[00:21:20]  Unlike these big woke, godless banks.
[00:21:23]  Why would you do your loans with banks who hate you?
[00:21:26]  And if you know someone who's still paying rent, tell them about Andrew and Todd.
[00:21:28]  Again, you might say, Charlie, now's the worst time to buy.
[00:21:31]  That's not true.
[00:21:32]  Okay.
[00:21:32]  Property values are going to go up.
[00:21:34]  And if you're renting, you're getting poorer.
[00:21:37]  So stop paying rent.
[00:21:38]  Start putting your hard-earned money into a home.
[00:21:40]  Again, there's some packages you might be available that might be available for you or no down payment.
[00:21:44]  Go to andrewandodd.com.
[00:21:46]  That is andrewandodd.com.
[00:21:47]  Tell them Charlie Kirk sent you.
[00:21:49]  They're wonderful people, enthusiastic.
[00:21:51]  They send me scripture.
[00:21:52]  They love the Lord.
[00:21:54]  They love the country.
[00:21:55]  Stop renting.
[00:21:56]  Start buying.
[00:21:57]  They're wonderful people.
[00:21:58]  AndrewandTodd.com.
[00:22:02]  Vivek Ramaswamy has a new ETF.
[00:22:05]  It's D-R-L-L.
[00:22:06]  Is that right, Vivek?
[00:22:08]  That's right.
[00:22:08]  Drill.
[00:22:09]  D-RLL.
[00:22:10]  And it's an ETF, so an exchange-traded fund.
[00:22:13]  So someone said, what company is it?
[00:22:14]  But it's an ETF.
[00:22:15]  So you could buy it.
[00:22:16]  Someone just emailed us, actually.
[00:22:17]  They just bought it.
[00:22:18]  They said, Charlie, I just bought $100 of Drill in my Schwab account.
[00:22:23]  Since an ETF, there's no fee and no minimum.
[00:22:25]  So there you go.
[00:22:26]  They're buying into it.
[00:22:27]  But how do we overcome the pension fund problems?
[00:22:30]  So I checked in the break.
[00:22:32]  The California pension fund has $440 billion under management.
[00:22:37]  That's an unbelievable amount of money.
[00:22:40]  They also call the shots at BlackRock.
[00:22:42]  They call the shots at Vanguard.
[00:22:43]  So if you count New York, California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, you have almost a trillion dollars of pension fund money that is thrown around with a lot of weight that the wokies have taken over.
[00:22:56]  What is the solution to the state pension funds that dictate so much of this radicalism?
[00:23:00]  So I'm going to give you a counterintuitive solution, Charlie.
[00:23:03]  It is not to focus on California and New York and Oregon.
[00:23:06]  It is actually to focus on the rest of the country, where if you add up the money in places, not just like Texas and Florida, but Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia.
[00:23:15]  I mean, you go across North, Dakota, South, Dakota, Wyoming, et cetera.
[00:23:18]  That actually adds up to a big sum of money as well.
[00:23:21]  Well, in excess, depending on any account of a trillion dollars as well.
[00:23:24]  But the problem is that red states for the last 10 years, as the ESG movement has invaded capital markets, have tried to stick their heads in the sand and pretend like the problem didn't exist.
[00:23:34]  They were dragged along for the ride.
[00:23:36]  So, when Cowpers and New York and other states demanded large asset managers, embrace these new climate change orthodoxies, embrace these racial justice orthodoxies, including quota systems, et cetera.
[00:23:46]  The other states just said, Hey, we're going to pretend like this doesn't exist.
[00:23:49]  But their capital and the citizens' capital that they manage was dragged along with it.
[00:23:53]  So, what's the solution?
[00:23:55]  I think it's going to actually be delivering political accountability to pension fund managers, including even in red and purple states, where the same thing that happened in school boards across the country last year, right?
[00:24:06]  The school board was supposed to be this managerial institution that was somehow untouched.
[00:24:10]  Everyday citizens and parents woke up and said, You know what, those aren't your kids, those are my kids.
[00:24:14]  I'm going to take ownership by bringing accountability to the school board.
[00:24:18]  We need to see that same movement happen in the pension fund system to pension fund boards, reminding them, especially even starting with red and purple states, to remind those state bureaucrats that it is not your money.
[00:24:28]  Yes, it is actually our money as citizens.
[00:24:30]  For example, North Dakota or South Dakota or Wyoming could say right now, our pension fund money will not go to BlackRock, Vanguard, or State Street, correct?
[00:24:39]  They can do that.
[00:24:40]  And more importantly, even affirmatively use their shareholding power to send a message to corporate America to say that, you know what, Apple or a subsidiary of Berkshire, after the way when you donate to BLM, that's not your money.
[00:24:50]  It is our money.
[00:24:51]  It is our citizens' money, and we won't stand by it.
[00:24:53]  Yes.
[00:24:53]  But we're going to have to actually pursue new alternatives that deliver a different voice to corporate America.
[00:25:00]  And that's where the red states haven't really woken up yet, but I think that they're going to.
[00:25:03]  They're going to have to be forced to because the everyday citizens are going to demand accountability just like they did at school boards last year.
[00:25:10]  Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
[00:25:11]  And I mean, so for people that are more kind of concerned about woke corporations, your vision is that through the asset fund managers, but also through creating alternatives, do you think deep down some of these CEOs have been waiting for this to try to?
[00:25:28]  I don't think a lot of these CEOs are on board for this.
[00:25:30]  Do you agree?
[00:25:30]  Well, some of them are.
[00:25:31]  So that's why we started with the U.S. energy sector, Charlie, because I spoke to, for example, one of the largest energy conferences in the country last week in Denver, a room full of oil and gas executives and CEOs.
[00:25:41]  What I love about the energy industry is that the employees of the energy industry are not the employees of Twitter.
[00:25:45]  And what I mean by that is Elon Musk can take over Twitter if he wants, but he's still got 60,000 employees who don't want to do the thing that he actually wants them to do.
[00:25:52]  In the U.S. energy industry, my impression, Charlie, is that they are waiting in the wings for this new shareholder mandate to say that, you know what, Strive gets off the ground, DRLL gets off the ground.
[00:26:01]  We already are off the ground.
[00:26:02]  Keep taking off and say that, you know what, there is a new sheriff in town.
[00:26:06]  There's a new shareholder mandate.
[00:26:08]  This is the post-ESD movement.
[00:26:10]  See you later, ESG in the rearview mirror.
[00:26:12]  We're going in that new direction because most people who work in the oil and gas industry don't believe that they're harming humanity.
[00:26:17]  They believe that they're delivering prosperity to human beings and Americans, and they're proud of it.
[00:26:21]  So I think it starts with the shareholders.
[00:26:23]  And then, Charlie, I think a lot of people mistake, take a company like Disney.
[00:26:26]  A lot of people mistake Disney for Disney CEO for bending the need to his employees.
[00:26:30]  Actually, the top shareholders of Disney are BlackRock, State Student, and Vanguard.

=== Post-ESG Movement and New Mandates (01:08) ===

[00:26:33]  And so I think once you get this new shareholder movement going, that's actually going to get top down.
[00:26:38]  But then again, BlackRock only has money because red states give them money, right?
[00:26:42]  So BlackRock does, I mean, again, BlackRock probably has some sovereign wealth money from some Middle Eastern country too.
[00:26:48]  However, but if all of a sudden BlackRock had $100 billion less than Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama said, we're not doing that anymore, boy, you're really onto something.
[00:26:57]  I would love to lead the red state crusade.
[00:26:59]  Nothing I love more than calling out weak Republicans for not understanding what time it is.
[00:27:03]  But these red states, they could change woke corporate culture almost overnight because it's like, oh, wow, okay, Disney is beholden to BlackRock.
[00:27:12]  BlackRock is beholden to Missouri.
[00:27:14]  And that's where all of a sudden you connect the dots.
[00:27:16]  Okay, we're out of time.
[00:27:17]  Vivek, it is striveassetmanagement, strivefunds.com.
[00:27:21]  And also buy his ETF if you want.
[00:27:24]  We don't do investment advice here, so check it out.
[00:27:26]  D-R-L-L.
[00:27:27]  If you like it, get it.
[00:27:28]  If not, that's okay too.
[00:27:29]  Vivek, thanks so much.
[00:27:30]  Everybody, thanks so much for listening.
[00:27:31]  Everybody, email me your thoughts as always.
[00:27:32]  Freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:27:34]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:27:35]  God bless.
[00:27:38]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.