The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, so why hasn't a state AG found a way to raid Hunter Biden? How strong could the right be if it was impervious to the shrieks and yelps of the Left? And most importantly: Does Relief Factor really work as much as Charlie says it does? Charlie gives his honest answers and deep strategic thoughts, live with former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at the Conservative Partnership Institute in Florida.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Saving The Country Together00:15:06
Hey everybody, happy Saturday.
My conversation with Mark Meadows.
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Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
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.
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.
That's why we are here.
So Charlie, you know, I guess the question that I want you to answer is, why does the left hate you so much?
That's a great question.
Well, first, I do want to acknowledge something and give a lot of credit to the people in this room.
To say I was skeptical of some of the strategies would be an understatement, right, Matt?
But boy, you guys made me a believer and you guys deserve the credit.
And I publicly acknowledge that truly.
So, and great sports about it, Chip, Matt, a lot of texts, a lot of calls.
Andy's around here somewhere.
And God bless you guys.
I have your back and you guys have been very magnanimous in this entire process and really great results.
So why does the left hate me?
Boy, look, just this week, MSNBC did a whole 10-minute segment on Turning Point USA and Washington Post and NBC News.
And look, I think we're effective.
I know we're effective at Turning Point and we're moving the dial.
But we're also, we are successfully going after their most confident bet on the future, which is they believe that their quote-unquote takeover of America is inevitable because they think every young person is going to be obedient to this Marxist totalitarian left-wing worldview.
And we're putting that into jeopardy every single day.
We're putting it in jeopardy through what we're doing on campuses, high schools, podcasting, digital social media.
So they need to try to destroy us.
And I'm also very touched by how many of you support us at Turning Point USA when we get viciously attacked.
And if you look what's happening right now, it's all by design.
Washington Post comes out with a totally unfair story on Ana Paulina this last week.
James O'Keefe is going through a very dramatic chapter, and I think more information will come out.
But make no mistake, there's a lot of people that would love to take James O'Keefe off the chessboard.
And we have to stand with James O'Keefe because we need...
Hear here.
Hear here.
Well said.
And I don't know all the details.
Nobody here actually knows all the details.
I guarantee that.
But I have not heard a single piece of evidence to satisfy my opinion that James O'Keefe should be put into exile.
Maybe he should get some better staff or whatever, but we need James O'Keefe.
Why am I saying that?
I think that the young people right now in the movement that, like an Ana Paulina, James O'Keefe, Turning Point USA, they need to try to take us off the chessboard.
And it's more important than ever.
We all stand together.
We hang together because the left-wing apparatus, they understand the power of young people that are able to articulate a conservative worldview.
When we go to college campuses, we routinely come across the same problem.
We can't find rooms big enough to fit all the students that want to attend our campus lectures and our campus events.
Literally, there's overflow after overflow after overflow.
You look at the top podcasts on Apple Podcasts, seven out of 10 of them are routinely conservative podcasts.
And so there's so much traction and there's so much movement.
And so.
So how do you fight back on college campuses against the indoctrination?
You know, a lot of these patriots that are here who've invested in CPI, many of them have invested in Turning Point USA, they've sent their kids or their grandkids to universities.
And what comes out is something very different than what they sent in.
And I'm not talking about education.
I'm talking about indoctrination.
Yeah, I wrote a whole book on this.
I'm sure I won't offend anybody too much in this audience.
Please stop sending kids you care about to college unless it's Hillsdale.
And I don't say that lightly.
I know the topic probably better than anybody else as far as the research, my experience.
I have visited over 120 schools.
We have a rather substantial radio and podcasting audience.
We have 200,000 donors at Turning Point USA.
And every day I get handwritten letters from parents that say, Charlie, I raised my kid with conservative Christian values and I sent them to college and now they've been totally turned against me.
And so unless you are prepared to play Russian roulette with your kids or grandkids' values, I encourage you not to send them to college unless it's Hillsdale and maybe University of Dallas and a couple others.
Now, how do you fight it?
Well, look, I think how we fight it on college campuses is actually the mentality that we have to have in the culture war.
And I agree with part of what Benny said.
I think we're winning on some fronts.
But if we're honest with ourselves, we have to think of our movement as dissidents in our own country.
And so we train our Turning Point USA students to think of themselves as dissidents in a Soviet bloc country.
And I know that might sound hyperbolic or an exaggeration, but it's literal that if you come out and you say a conservative, if you say that men cannot give birth on a majority of American college campuses, they will penalize you, kick you out of class, and they will condemn you.
We used to call that biology.
Yes, that's right.
If you say that America is a great country, they will ridicule with everything you have.
So what gives me hope is that when a Turning Point USA student wants to sign up or start a high school chapter, by the way, we're on pace for 1,000 high school chapters across the country, an incredible accomplishment, something that's very, very incredible.
We tell them, you're going to lose your friends.
You're going to get bullied, ridiculed, scorned, and condemned.
Do you still want to do it?
And they say, yes, the country is worth it.
The price has never been greater for young conservative activism, yet the energy and the enthusiasm behind it has never been greater.
They are signing up for something where they know it's going to be uncomfortable and they're doing it anyway.
So how do you fight back?
Well, the way on college, you have to understand you're going to be in the ideological minority.
However, there's more people out there that agree with you than will ever say that, and that you are part of a broader generational movement to save the country.
And then finally, I mean, we really don't give an inch at Turning Point USA in our tactics, our methods, or how we communicate about it.
We could talk about that, but we've been incredibly effective, you know, in what we've done.
Well, you have been.
And I think what happens is, is when you have members of Congress willing to come on your podcast, your show, and quite frankly, to reach an audience that is far greater than certainly than MSNBC and CNN combined.
No, that is correct.
Yeah.
And so when you reach that, your ability to go directly to the people that need to hear it.
What makes you so certain that when you go on a college campus that you're going to have this queue waiting because Benny showed the University of Tampa, and I was shocked because University of Tampa is not known to be the hotbed of Hillsdale.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Well, look.
When we talk about the younger generation broadly, 20% super woke, super left-wing.
And then there's probably 10 to 15% that would automatically just say I'm a conservative.
The rest are winnable.
They are persuadable.
And there's this massive opportunity.
By the way, we're not going to win them over by diluting our values or all of a sudden becoming neoliberals in every regard or doing what the moderates in our party want us to do.
They actually are attracted to articulate, deep, thoughtful, provocative stances on issues that are quote unquote thought crimes.
You are not going to win over young people by saying, you know, this is the conservative case for trans surgery.
No, no, no.
You're going to win over young people and draw them in by saying truths that are rooted in eternal wisdom that might be repackaged in ways that can get their attention by saying something like, you know what?
Actually, there are only two genders.
In fact, I reject the term transgender.
It's a fake term.
There are two sexes, and it's because God made it that way.
Like they lose their mind, obviously, but that's part of the problem.
20% loses their mind.
But they're loud, but isn't that the country we're living in?
That's a perfect example of the country we're living in, which is 20% of these incredibly antisocial, incredibly aggressive people control everything because we're afraid of what they do to us.
We outnumber them.
We do.
A vast majority of Americans think it's preposterous that young people are being taught pornography at the age of seven.
So why does it happen?
And this is my message to the Freedom Caucus.
It's my message to legislatures, my message to CEOs.
We have to be comfortable using political power against our opponents and against the opposition.
We have to be comfortable.
This is something where people get a little uneasy.
So by political power, what do you mean?
Great question.
Ron DeSantis punished Disney.
The old conservative movement would say, well, who am I to possibly say that?
No, no.
We have to make the opposition feel a penalty and a cost for what they're doing to us and to our voters.
And so that's one example of many, right?
And in Congress, that's difficult because you don't control all the chambers of power.
Let me give you another example, though, right?
Which is we, and I want to give credit to the Freedom Caucus, and I think Matt was appropriate by also acknowledging Kevin McCarthy keeping his word on this, but making Eric Swalwell and Elon Omar and Adam Schiff be ridiculed in public, that's a good thing.
That shows that we have political power and we're willing to use it.
I would go even further and say they shouldn't serve on any committees, but that's, you know, I'm unusual in that way.
You're unusual in a lot of ways.
But here's what I will say, though, is that the other side needs to fear us as much as many of our voters fear them.
This is not a coffee shop debate anymore.
So I'll go even a step further.
You know, I talked to a bunch of attorney generals and they, you know, their eyes kind of get wide when I say this, which is when they raided Mar-a-Lago, we should have had DAs and attorney generals, those that actually have the power to do this, just begin to start to sign subpoenas and search warrants of high-level Democrat officials.
They need to believe that there's an equal and opposite reaction when they act tyrannical against us.
And currently, they don't necessarily fear that.
And so that's a deeper, more provocative thought that I think that there's some really amazing leadership being done in that regard.
But I'll give you another example, which is instead of giving big tech a tax cut, which we know we did previously, which I love the tax bill.
It was great.
We should have done everything we possibly can to punish these big tech companies legislatively for their interventionist behavior in the 2020 election and other ways.
This is not the way a lot of Republicans talk in D.C.
And so by pun, no, it isn't.
In fact, you'll get people who say, well, gosh, they're a private company.
Don't go after them.
And yet, and yet, Matt Gates brought up the hearing where he was in, where he was talking to the lobbyists.
And literally, the lobbyists could not name all his customers or wouldn't name all of his customers until Matt says, well, it's on your website.
And he starts just listing them out.
It's Google, it's Pfizer, it's this.
And the guy sheepishly says, well, yeah, that's it.
So how do you punish them?
Yeah, well, I mean, if you controlled all the chambers of commerce, you would obviously Congress, you would strip them of their special immunity.
But here's the broader point, and you could apply it any way you want.
We have to make their entire flow of business, their ease of access to government, and their lifestyle.
We have to make it all so uncomfortable for them legislatively and culturally.
And I think we're starting to finally learn this.
And we learned it honestly from Donald Trump.
And so if you look at kind of the allocation of power in America, one side of the American political spectrum is enthusiastic about using political power.
That is Democrats.
These are Soviet totalitarians.
We are not just skeptical.
We are adamantly against it.
And philosophically, I understand why he gets that conclusion because we think government, legislation, we can't do any of these things.
Look, everybody, the only way you're going to be able to get these Stalinists to back off is if they believe that there's going to be a penalty for how harsh they come after us, right?
And so I'm open to any ideas, right?
And we have the legislative minds here.
I mean, from impeaching Majorca's, all that stuff is fine.
But a lot of this, honestly, Mark, comes at the state level.
It has to, because the state level, and that's why the State Freedom Caucus you guys are doing at CPI is so incredibly important.
And DeSantis has played around with some of these ideas, but it shouldn't even be a question.
Every Republican governor in the country should say, if you medically mutilate children, you should go to jail or go practice medicine in a different state.
Critical race theory has no place, but all of that requires courage and then obviously legislative action.
Well, you have a lot of courage.
I can say this.
So what you're telling this audience is that it's not enough to just have hearings and pretend like you're outraged over Benghazi and have nothing happen.
The theatrics have to stop everybody, okay?
And this room is the outlier because you guys actually want action and you want to do these sorts of things.
And so this is considered, this is in some ways what the left fears the most and what the media fears the most.
They actually fear the American right understanding how much power we have and then using that power.
There is the lie of neutrality that has permeated the Republican Party, where I hear from Republican officials all the time and some donors, well, Charlie, we have to be better than that.
Revenge Politics Over Neutrality00:04:37
I just want us to be neutral and we can get back to this place of decency and common sense.
There will be one winner, them or us.
And we need to be willing to do what is necessary to win.
So you're saying don't be neutral.
No, I'm saying we must play offense.
We must be unapologetic at using every chamber of power possible.
We must use attorney generals, district attorneys, ballot referendums, indictments, subpoenas, committees.
It should be in all of the abort.
Why Hunter Biden is not in jail by some state attorney general or district attorney is beyond me.
Make the Biden family uncomfortable.
They raided Mar-a-Lago.
You raid Mar-a-Lago.
We come after one of your own.
It needs to be an equal and opposite reaction.
Now, it might not sound people like, oh, Charlie, that's too simple.
And you're talking about revenge politics.
You're going to get run over by these people.
And I know this personally, that the only thing that they fear is power.
Why do you say that?
Read their literature.
These people are not persuaded by ideas.
Go read Herbert Marcuse.
Go read Jacques Derrida.
Go read Michelle Foucault.
Go read the postmodern philosophical base of the American left.
They believe if you strip down all of what they call the fake normative post-colonialist structure that built the American West, all that governs human behavior is whoever has more power.
I wish that was not the case.
I want to live in the country I was raised in.
I do.
Where we had debates and common values.
You know, people, it's nauseating, Mark, when people say, you know, I think we have more in common than we don't.
I have nothing in common with the American Democrat Party.
In fact, I wish I have nothing.
In fact, I hope and I desire for them to not be anywhere near a political party.
People say, well, Charlie, don't have more bipartisanship.
We've had nothing but bipartisanship over the last bipartisanship on bad trade deals, on open borders, on sending money to Zelensky.
We have the most bipartisan uniparty consensus, and we become less free and the country continues to deteriorate.
And so, but here's why they fear DeSantis.
This is why they fear Trump.
And this is why they do not fear Brian Kemp.
This is why they do not, no, seriously.
Brian Kemp, nice guy.
I'm sure he's great at the masters to hang out with or whatever, right?
And why Abbott needs to make a decision really soon, and I'm afraid he's choosing incorrectly.
Because DeSantis is all of a sudden showing a blueprint that governors have a lot more power than anyone ever wanted to acknowledge or realize.
The federal government is actually a creation of the states, not the other way around.
And the media is doing everything they possibly can not to allow, because they know that all of a sudden, 20 Republican governors that grow a spine with a legislature that supports them, all of a sudden you're talking about a restoration of federalism in a way where they could not possibly comprehend it.
So they need to have, look, the Chamber of Commerce, they need to have business as usual.
Business as usual is neoliberalism.
Agree to disagree.
You know, we all are, no more agree to disagree, okay?
There's going to be one winner in this entire equation, right?
And people say, well, Charlie, do you want to reach to their levels?
I want to win.
My political philosophy is about victory.
And I think it's about time that we start to realize what we love requires a little bit of fights that we haven't actually exhibited in the past.
Well, I wish you would just, Charlie, say what you mean.
I mean, this is, but there is a pressing question that most of the people in the room really have been anxious to ask you is, does Relief Factor actually work?
Okay, let's clear this up, okay?
So, listen.
Listen.
Before I answer the question, it's a room full of politicians, so I do not have to answer the question, okay?
When you are in podcasting or radio, you are presented with a menu of options.
So it was catheters, reverse mortgages, that weird thing that goes up the stairs, and I have no idea what it actually does.
Gold and silver IRAs, okay?
Or relief factor, okay?
I don't have the option.
I don't have, listen, or Patriot move.
I don't have, I don't get Lexis.
I don't get McDonald's, okay?
And here's what I'll say about Relief Factor.
It's 100% drug-free.
And Jim DeMint takes it.
Exploding The Lie Of Neutrality00:05:33
Well said, well said.
That was a great response.
Great response.
So, Charlie, I'll finish up with this.
You have been very, very kind.
But what makes liberals' heads explode on college campus?
I've seen your viral videos, you know, and now I understand from Benny why exactly they went viral.
But when you get a million, two million, three million views on a video, what do you think makes their head explode and why do people react to it?
Yeah, so I'll actually broaden it because I think the entire country is becoming a massive open-air college campus.
And what I mean by that, the elements that I've been fighting for the last decade are everywhere.
The thought police, political censorship, all the kind of things that used to be isolated is now, I believe it's more dangerous than even the virus of 2020.
But what makes them most angry, Mark, is actually best exhibited by something I think the movement did pretty well.
And that's when they tried to take Matt Gates off the chessboard.
And what they thought is they thought they could ice him out and he would no longer be invited to events and he would no longer be put on podcasts.
And in fact, they were stunned by how many people stood by him, including CPI and others.
And that all of a sudden made them less powerful.
In fact, we still had him at turning point events and still came on the show and all that.
Why does that matter?
Their power source is derived from our weakness.
As we capitulate, they grow stronger.
When we hold the line, they're all of a sudden not as powerful as they think they are.
Okay, Washington Post, you wrote another story.
Okay, DOJ, you put another press release.
So what makes their heads explode, what makes them worried, is that all of a sudden there's a new conservative movement that stands by their own in solidarity, that when they try to take out James O'Keefe, all of a sudden the clamoring thing on Twitter is like, actually, no, we should stand by him and he's terrific.
We're not going to go put him out to Alba into exile and wish him well.
This is new.
Right.
Because now they're realizing, and this is why they're so afraid and why they have to try to get things passed so quickly.
And they had to try to get HR1 and they need universal mail-in ballots.
Because the really smart liberals are seeing a conservative movement more broadly that is really ready to fight.
And so what makes their heads explode, the last thing I'll say on that is not just truth, but the idea that there is an objective truth.
Moral subjectivity is one of the key ingredients to modern leftism.
My truth, your truth.
This is one of the ways that they've hypnotized God-fearing Republicans into inaction.
And I'll show you how this works, okay?
They say, everybody, live and let live.
It's not that.
It's live and let them rule.
That's what it's been.
It's been, I have my truth, you have your truth.
Now, you might have your own opinions.
You might have your own perspectives.
There's only one truth.
And I believe the ultimate truth is Jesus Christ and he sets you free of your sins.
But why does this matter?
Because when you have truth, agreed upon language, people are a lot harder to control tyrannically.
When everybody has a truth in their own eyes, it says in the Bible, whatever does what is right in their own eyes, it's so much easier to be able to create a tyrant to come in.
Said.
So what makes them most nervous?
They're nervous that a new conservative movement is rising and CPI, you guys are doing such god's work with this they're.
They're nervous that, all of a sudden, that the kind of band of rebels in Congress is more articulate.
They're younger, they are more diverse than ever before.
That hurts, that hurts, but let's be honest that i'm with you.
I'm with you, go ahead.
The band of rebels when I was young in politics were always kind of portrayed as like the crazy wacko people, and sometimes they didn't do themselves any service when they went on cable television.
I'm not going to say any names, but you could kind of think of, you know kind of some of that and remember, just in the 2012 t the Tea Party wave, that wasn't the Todd Aiken moments that were misportray.
Imagine that.
Now though yeah, I think that actually, the conservative movement might have been able to bail out a Murdoch Aiken senate campaign in turmoil with proper media training, social media assistance, going and doing rallies, clarifying correctly and then playing offense against the Democrats.
The 2012 Republican movement abandoned two winnable senate races in red states, Indiana and Missouri.
One of them where the candidate said something legitimately you know, that needed clarification one where he really didn't say anything that bad at all, and we just abandoned them and we allowed two Democrats to win.
So how has that changed, Mark?
Well, all of a sudden they're realizing like, oh my goodness, this is a movement that stands by their own, they're embracing the principles of solidarity, they're willing to punch back twice as hard, they're willing to use mockery and ridicule, and nothing is more effective against tyrants than ridicule, which is why, by percentage, more comedians and cartoonists were put in Soviet gulags than any other profession, because the people that mocked the ruler were the most effective in penetrating irrational tyranny.
That's why what Benny does is so incredibly effective and so important.
Victory Is Not Inevitable00:00:49
And so look, I will say this, our victory is not inevitable.
People say we're gonna win.
I don't know that to be true, but it is definitely possible.
I reject the doomsdays doomsday, and I reject the kind of hopium.
Oh Charlie, there's a plan.
There's no plan.
Okay, there is, is an opportunity, and you have agency and free will and i'm blessed to fight along so many of you, and we have an opportunity.
Will y'all give up a great warm welcome for my good friend Charlie Kirk?
Thanks so much for listening.
Everybody email us your thoughts.
As always freedom at Charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening and god bless For more.
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