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May 25, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
34:21
Rolling Stone's Mega-Lame Hitpiece with James O'Keefe and Rich Baris
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
John Fetterman and Journalist Pay 00:10:27
Hey everybody, down the Charlie Kirk Show.
James O'Keefe joins the program for his breaking news on John Fetterman.
And then we have Rich Barris to talk about the latest DeSantis polling.
As always, you can email us, freedom at charliekirk.com, get involved with turning pointusa at tpusa.com.
That is tpusa.com.
Please attend our young women's leadership summit at tpusa.com slash ywls.
That is tpusa.com slash ywls.
Our young women's leadership summit, June 9, 10, and 11, largest event in the country for female conservatives.
We have an amazing lineup of speakers, so check it out and get your tickets today at tpusa.com slash ywls.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
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.
Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
So we got sweatshirt Shrek, who is the U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, and the great James O'Keefe, who he's had a very, let's just say, interesting year.
I have so much respect for this man.
Andrew, I think you would agree because he has in like 60 days stood up an unbelievable media operation where he had every excuse to kind of just go on the sidelines.
And now this guy's breaking stories like you wouldn't believe.
I'm telling you, people do not understand how hard it is to stand up an organization overnight.
So Veritas 11 years.
It's unbelievable what he's done in such a short amount of time.
So you have the Veritas circus, right?
And then, boom, he has OMG now, O'Keeffe Media Group.
And the guy is dropping, you know, metaphorical bombs against the deep state, against all this stuff.
And it's just like nothing.
He's just like, yeah, we're just getting started.
It happened almost instantaneously.
I have so much respect for this man.
He put points on the board.
He had every reason to complain and to kvetch.
And he's back in the arena.
And that's where he belongs.
James O'Keeffe, welcome back to the program.
Hey, Charlie, good to be with you.
I got my Carhartt sweater on right here.
And in homage to Senator Fetterman, which we just launched a story on.
Are you wearing shorts?
And if you are, I do not want to see that.
So that's the real question.
And if you, you're probably better dressed than Mr. Fetterman.
So what did you discover here?
Let's play.
Let's play Cut 79.
Sorry for the delay, James.
We're traveling, so it's tough to dialogue.
Let's play Cut 79.
He'd be okay with like overturning the Second Amendment, probably.
I think on my family prefer nobody else that we can get interviews to.
It's like the ones you pick, like, we'll just say it's that, you know.
It's so interesting, but I want to know who they are because I'll listen to those people.
There's like puppets, though, of my big reporters who are like, they aren't like, you know, we'll paint the narrative the way we want.
So that's why you picked the journalist that you pick.
They'll say whatever you want this to.
Yeah.
All right.
So James, tell us about the honey trap that you laid here and how you were able to get this.
What is this?
It's a little confusing.
Take as much time as you need.
Walk us through this video.
Well, what you heard, there's the voice of a female intrepid journalist.
For those of you joining, I've got my Carhartt sweater on.
Actually, I confronted this guy in the street two days ago in DC.
She got up to go to the restroom.
I sat down.
Charlie, these are citizen journalists that are coming to O'KeefeMediaGroup.com and signing up to do what I do.
And we're training them.
We're equipping them with cameras and they're meeting with these people.
This happens to be in Washington, D.C.
This guy that you saw on camera is a special assistant to John Fetterman.
He basically holds his iPad, holds his fanny pack, gives him his medication, et cetera, et cetera, very close to him, as close as someone could possibly be.
And he's saying all the things that Fetterman really believes.
He wants to ban the Second Amendment.
I asked him if he wants to ban the First Amendment.
I would assume so, because in this tape, he says that they treat journalists as puppets.
And he named certain journalists, Charlie.
He names like Pod Save America and other sort of lefty journalists that they basically use as their ombudsman.
So none of this is shocking or surprising, obviously, to anybody, but you never actually see people say these things on video.
You never see them say them on the air.
So I've been doing this for, as you know, 15 years.
We're in the confirm suspicions business.
That's what we do now at O'Keeffe Media Group.
And what we really want to do is to create copycats, Charlie.
We want people to go out there and meet with politicians, their staff, administrative state people, you know, anyone that's lying, cheating, or stealing.
We want them to copy what this young woman did and we'll pay them $1,000.
And it's sort of taking off.
And, you know, we've got about 1,000 people that have signed up on our website to go do this sort of thing.
Andrew, 1,000 people.
James, you have teasing a second video.
And it looks like you actually confront this special assistant.
You've teased it on Twitter.
So let's just go ahead and play it.
And maybe you can tell us a little bit more about what went down.
Cut 81.
Hey, Luke.
Is this you take it?
My name is James O'Keefe, and the person you're expecting actually works for me.
It's so interesting.
You're on video saying that John Fetterman wants to ban the Second Amendment.
He probably, he'd be okay with overturning the Second Amendment.
Does he want to ban any other amendments?
The ones he picked, like, we'll just say exactly what he's talking to, you know?
How are the journalists or puppets?
Luke?
Luke, why don't you just talk to us?
He weaved this way and that.
He bobbed and weaved through the street back and forth.
He went, where are you going?
Shouldn't journalists be skeptical of those in power?
I have no comment.
You have lots of comments.
God bless you, James O'Keefe.
This is bobbing and weaving.
He was zigging and zagging across the street, banging into me.
There's one moment.
This is like a seven-minute long thing.
So Twitter, just an hour ago, Charlie approved Twitter subscriptions for me.
So what we're going to do is launch, I launched a minute-long thing there, and there'll be a 30-second reel, but we'll put, well, we have to figure out a way to pay our bills.
So we're going to charge $7 a month for people on Twitter.
This just happened an hour ago.
Twitter approved it on Stripe.
So we're going to release the full version of that.
But yeah, there you see him.
I sit down at the table and he goes, oh, crap.
And then he immediately gets on the phone with, I guess, the cheapest staff.
Like basically, they got me.
Scared to death.
He goes into the hallway of this restaurant and he's banging into me.
This is the damnedest thing I've ever seen.
The guy is like banging into me repeatedly, losing his mind.
Don't you love to see it?
We need to see accountability.
And we never see any of that anywhere.
So my vision is to have more people do what I do.
Not just me do it, but lots of other people do it.
So we go out into the street and it's sort of like a John Madden NFL game.
He's going this way, that way, cross the street, almost gets hit by a car.
And that's when I'm talking to him.
And these things are pretty entertaining.
It's like the catch a predator sort of thing, except not with child predators, but with lying Washington, D.C. Congress critters.
Can you just remind people about O'Keeffe Media Group, how they can get involved, how they can support you, because you want to democratize in the best possible way a decentralized conservative journalism, almost guerrilla operation.
Correct.
I think people don't trust institutions anymore.
Rightfully so.
Look at what happened with Tucker Carlson at Fox News.
Look at the majority owners of these companies.
Look at the majority owners of Pfizer and the stakeholders and the stockholders and the pernicious influence of advertising on media and the lack of investigative journalism.
So you need to decentralize journalism.
You need a movement.
You need a movement of integrity and accountability.
We've talked about this for many years.
But the way to do it with an O'Keefe Media Group, what we're trying to do is we're trying to put out bombshell reports every week.
We hope we'll have one every single week.
And we want to pay you to go out there and record what's happening.
And we're going to democratize it, like you said.
And if you go on our website, O'KeefeMediaGroup.com, you can sign up to be a journalist and we will deploy you and we will equip you so that you can do this sort of thing.
We're going to be producing a series of masterclasses that'll be coming out next month.
And this girl in this video, look at what she did.
Look at how brave she is.
A lot of people are already doing this.
And next time, you know, you want people say, I want to do this.
This is interesting.
Go to our website, fill out the form, and we will pay you to be a citizen journalist.
It's a tough mission, Charlie.
No one's ever actually done this before.
I hope it works.
I think it will.
We have to decentralize information gathering.
Otherwise, it'll be corrupted and co-opted.
Look what happened to me in the last four months.
The line drawn in the sand there.
But I've been untethered and now I'm free to pursue my true calling.
So I hope you all subscribe to O'KeeffeMediaGroup.com.
It's 20 bucks or Twitter subscription, 7 bucks to help pay the bills to keep us going forward.
And we did get a response, John Fetterman, by the way, yesterday.
He actually cursed us off in an email.
Hillsdale College and Christian Nationalism 00:05:56
He said, thanks, F off.
That's what his chief of staff said.
So sophisticated.
As long as we now know the Eagles are better than the Eagles.
James, you're an American hero.
Check out O'Keefe Media Group.
Thanks so much.
We appreciate it.
And you're welcome back anytime.
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Okay, we're here at a TPUSA Faith Pastors Summit.
We have so much going on at Turning Point USA, high school chapters, college chapters, Turning Point Academy.
We are doing an amazing amount of content on digital social media, training the next generation of leaders.
We have our Young Women's Leadership Summit.
We have so much happening.
And this pastor summit is getting some headlines.
Rolling Stone writes an article.
They say, Charlie Kirk, no, Charlie Kirk's turning point pivots to Christian nationalism.
Now, mind you, that's not a term I use to describe myself at all.
In fact, I don't even really know what it means.
I like the word Christian.
Obviously, I'm a Christian.
I am a nationalist, but put together it's a spooky kind of term.
And it goes through, and it's the strangest article.
And it just kind of goes back and forth and back and forth about how their, you know, Turning Point USA has grown throughout the years.
I will, I do like this part.
Turning Point USA, the right-wing powerhouse.
I'll take that.
Thank you.
In fact, we should have it framed, right, Andrew?
Turning Point USA is a right-wing powerhouse.
Rolling Stone.
That's exactly right.
That's it.
We should add.
We're going to do that.
That's it.
You might see it behind Charlie's head in the branding.
And I have a big head, so it's going to have to be pretty big.
Big brain.
That's right.
Here's what's hilarious about it, though, is the guy texted or something, you know, the reporter.
And he's like, can we Twitter DM me?
Can we do something?
I'm going to be writing this about how Turning Point is a Christian nationalist organization, and I have to get this done in 13 hours.
Semi-your comment.
It was like, so you've already got the...
I mean, if you look at this piece, it's like a 4,000-word piece.
I mean, he didn't write it overnight.
The guy obviously had the whole piece ready to go and ready to attack.
And we knew it was going to be a hit piece.
So screw them.
So there's a couple ways they try to attack successful organizations.
They'll try to make you seem radical.
They'll try to attack you if you're corrupt.
They can't do any of that here.
Obviously, they stumble over their own shoelaces.
Or they try to make you seem as if you're not living up to your own ideals.
Solinsky.
Right?
Always make the enemy live up to their own rules.
That's right.
Own book of rules.
And so what they're trying to do is they're trying to otherize us.
This is find a target, personalize it, polarize it.
And so they're trying to make us seem polarized.
And so what they try to do is, it's kind of funny.
You read the article.
They can't call us corrupt, right?
In fact, it even goes out of its way to say TPUSA Faith makes every church they work with sign a 501c3 disclosure to make sure not to violate.
I mean, we're squeaky clean at it.
We take it very seriously, okay?
And so they can't call us immoral.
So they just say that we're too extreme in our biblical values.
In fact, you got to read this one quote here about Rob McCoy.
This one's so funny.
This is written.
This is written.
This is my favorite piece of the book.
This is written by a secular journalist who is something else, right?
Let me find.
Yeah, you got to read it.
It's fabulous.
It says, so it says sponsoring the pastor summit here in Nashville starting May 24th.
It promises to empower attendees to stand boldly for righteousness in a world that desperately needs Jesus.
Guilty as charged.
The speaker lineup includes Eric Metaxas, of course, and Pastor Rob McCoy, Kurt's spiritual mentor and co-chair of TPUSA Faith.
Now, he is my pastor.
Yeah, you're a pastor, but like spiritual.
What is this?
Like Obi-Wan Kenobi?
And, you know, we were doing Star Wars references yesterday.
But this is how, this is, this is the theology of this guy.
I can guarantee you.
It comes out of like, you know, Star Wars.
He says, the doctrine of McCoy's church insists that Jesus will return to earth, literally in the Bible, to establish a kingdom of which there will be no end.
Literally in the Bible.
This is mainline theology.
And it demands that all believers fulfill his command to preach the gospel to the entire world.
Also in the Bible.
So just literally the Apostles' Creed.
This is like Christianity 101.
This is the ABCs of Christianity.
Like the bare minimum that you need to believe in order to consider yourself a Christian.
And Rolling Stone thinks this is like a really killer line of attack against Pastor McCoy.
Yeah, and they also say, well, there's this sea change.
And there actually isn't.
They say, oh, it's from college organizing to economic around economic issues to church organizing.
It's actually all harmonic.
It's all towards the same thing.
It's about liberty.
Liberty is God's idea, not man's idea.
And we are now growing as an organization to other communities to try to push back against wokeism and power leaders.
And Rolling Stone finds this to be objectionable.
Restoring the American Founding Promise 00:06:41
In fact, they say we're a threat to democracy.
That is not a joke.
And so, you know, it kind of is they play patty cake here for a while, and then they just buried lead all of a sudden emerges, right?
It's like, oh, they do this, and they're a threat to democracy.
Where is this?
I'm trying to find it in the article.
I got to find it here out of nowhere.
Listen, were the founders Christian?
Were they into America?
They were a Christian 55 out of 56.
I mean, if there was any more clear-cut case that these people hate America, it's the fact that they can't even get behind the fact that our founders, the people who founded America, were Christians and they were nationalists.
So, again, the founding fathers would have been labeled by Rolling Stone as Christian nationalists.
But the focus on fundamentalism, again, what does fundamentalism mean actually mean?
Represents a clear and present danger to democracy.
Training a younger generation to raise up champions of lower taxes and fewer regulations is one thing.
It's quite another to seek to organize end times zealots with the aim of achieving a religious takeover of the secular United States.
Okay, first of all, we want people to live free, free from degeneracy, free from trans tyranny, and a beautiful life of flourishing.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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I'm getting a lot of emails about the Rolling Stone article.
We have our TPSA faith thing here.
Again, they act as if there's some sort of subterranean clandestine agenda.
We want a restoration of the promise of the American founding.
We want a constitutional reset.
There's not some sort of secret agenda.
If you properly understood, the Declaration and the Constitution are quote-unquote radical documents in the eyes of secular left-wing Marxist postmodern reporters because they actually are at odds with the idea of checks and balances, consent to the governed, a republic, not a democracy.
The idea that you could separate from tyranny, virtue being necessary for a free people.
This is stuff that we talk about.
Again, our founding documents are so amazing, Andrew.
So I just wanted to say we should put Rich on the spot and ask him about it.
I actually had texted him.
We had a chat.
Oh, did he read the article?
I told him about it.
What's so funny about the sound of the world?
I'm going to put it about this moment.
Okay, we'll have Rich Barris in a second.
So get him ready, everybody.
So we get articles written about us all the time.
I've had more people text us about Jordan Peterson tweeted about it.
James Lindsay, you know, James Lindsay, you know that.
And by the way, people know that this is hackery by the media.
They know what we believe here.
They know our agenda.
Our agenda is very clear.
We want the Constitution and the promise of the Declaration.
We want 1776, 1787, 1791, which is the Declaration of Independence and also the Virginia Bill of Rights.
We want 1787, which was the ratification of the Constitution and then the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
So those three years, 76, 87, 91, we want the promises of those years to be restored here in America.
Well, and by the way, and we should bring, go ahead and bring Richards.
Yeah, let's bring Rich Barris here, people's pundits.
I just want to say, and I said this to Rich, I said, listen, the vast majority of conservatives, vast majority of Christian conservatives, yeah, they might have theological differences on homosexuality, gay marriage, whatever.
There is a big difference between all of that.
And you come after our kids and you come after the culture at large.
You start shoving it down everybody's face all the time.
Yeah, you're going to get pushback on that stuff, but they want to turn it into this Christian nationalism with a handmaid's tail or whatever.
Well, hold on a second.
What is the promise of the Declaration?
When the course of human events becomes necessary, we want people to dissolve political bans.
I want to dissolve political bans with the trans lobby.
We are risking.
That's the promise of the Declaration.
That's not actually radical.
What's radical is them trying to shove it down everybody's face.
They're King George, but they're tranny King George.
This is 100%.
They're colonizing our country.
Rich, Rich Barris, your thoughts.
I'm sorry.
I didn't know I was on.
That was too funny.
I couldn't keep it back.
I did hear about it, and then I have it up actually on my browser.
Now I didn't get through it all yet, but it's like the first six paragraphs, Charlie, immediately jump out at me.
It says, you know, you are founded on promoting free markets, and now we're turning to this, you know, this brand of Christianity, pushing Christianity.
It's ignorance, though, because free markets and capitalism, as our founders believed in it, is not the pursuit of greed or wealth for wealth's sake.
They believe in things like the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
Max Weber, it's a pretty important book.
I mean, it just seems like these people don't really know what they're talking about.
They don't know the worldviews that inform the founders who designed this government and our country.
So there's nothing at odds with promoting free markets and promoting Christian values.
You know, there's nothing at odds with the people who are not.
No, in fact, they rhyme.
They're harmonic.
Yes.
We love free markets because we love people and it points towards flourishing and goodness and wealth creation and personal responsibility and private property is a necessary prerequisite against tyranny.
Can we just say it out loud?
Guys, the people that were behind the most successful civilizations in the history of the world happened to be Christians.
They happened to be characters that came out of the Enlightenment, that came out of the Christian Enlightenment, that believed devoutly in their God and their Savior.
And guess what?
It worked real well.
Okay, yeah, were there flaws?
Of course.
Are we correcting some of those flaws over time?
I hope so.
Now we're regressing.
If you love the Lord, if you love virtue, if you love people, you should hate poverty.
And if you hate poverty, you have to have respect for markets because markets are the most proven way to obliterate poverty.
Now, are there problematic markets?
Of course there are.
There's externalities, there's monopolies and all this.
But the trend of a market-based economy is a savage ability to get rid of absolute poverty.
Markets as the Path to Poverty 00:11:16
That is a fact.
If you love the poor, like the left pretends, you have to have respect for markets.
Period.
Okay, let's shift gears here.
Rich Barris, Ron DeSantis, you have some really interesting polling here.
First, I want to get your reaction.
Rich, you're super smart.
What is your initial response to Governor Ron DeSantis announcing in an interview on Twitter with Elon Musk?
What do you think about that?
You know, I think that there were some people on the right who were always skeptical of Elon Musk taking over Twitter and whether or not he was a very big promoter of free speech or whatever his motives were.
Was Twitter getting much better?
There isn't a universal love there for Elon Musk.
So I know what they're trying to do.
It's very clear that whoever is in charge of his social media campaign, Elon Musk has kind of lent the power of Twitter to them.
So I'm actually not surprised at all.
For anybody who's been on the receiving end of the attacks from DeSantis people who don't like what you have to say, you shouldn't be surprised.
You're not surprised.
So, Rich, what is your polling showing then?
What is the polling showing?
What does the race look like now that Ron DeSantis is officially entered?
This has been an argument for months now.
He hasn't announced.
Wait till he announced.
Charlie, nobody that we poll tells us they don't think Ron DeSantis is running.
Everybody knew he was running.
This idea, and maybe it's just the modern world that we're in.
It is not the way it was 15 years ago, you know, 10 years ago, where people jump in a race, there's this big production news event, and then they get all this favorable coverage and they get a bump.
The truth is, I'm kind of in the camp with Harry Enton and even Nate Cohen at the New York Times.
I think his bump already happened.
If he gets one, it'll be a very small one when you're behind 45 points.
You need more than an announcement bump.
And I think that that was a lot.
I think it was to put a lot on that, a lot of emphasis on that, because if he doesn't get it, and I'll tell you right now, in our poll, people track daily like us, there's no bump.
There's nothing.
So maybe give 48 hours, 72 hours.
I don't know what's fair, you know, a fair time period to expect.
But we just got out of some districts, very educated, very wealthy.
We're looking at them on purpose because we want to know where Trump could be weak.
And nobody was like, I think I'll decide when Ron DeSantis announces.
Trump is still above 50 in all of these.
There are three of them that we did, and he was above 50 in all three.
So he's not as dominant nationally, but we wouldn't expect him to be.
It was more educated, more wealthy.
But we did expect Ron DeSantis to perform better in some of these areas.
And in truth, only marginally better than some.
So, and Andrew, I sent the poll to earlier this morning.
You too, you as well.
I mean, that's the fourth area, guys.
Trump supposedly lost Tarran County by a few thousand votes in 2020.
So if there was going to be an area where we were going to see weakness, it would be there.
Andrew.
Yeah, Rich, what you're saying, I just want to make sure the audience is king in on it because you and I had a chance to brief on it before the show.
You're basically saying in what should amount to the most favorable DeSantis sort of district, right, based on education, based on wealth, based on just everything that you'd polled before, that especially earlier in the year, folks were trending towards DeSantis in this group.
You're saying you're not seeing that now in an area that should be bright for DeSantis.
Is that essentially what you're saying?
That's exactly right.
Even when we had DeSantis at about 31% nationally and Trump in the low 40s, 43%, had we polled this district at that time, I bet we would have saw either a tie race or maybe even DeSantis leading by a few points.
This is an area where 20 or roughly one in five Republicans have an advanced grad an advanced degree, and yet another 25, 30% have a four-year degree.
Very small working class, not a big 30 to 50,000 group.
People make a lot of money here.
And Trump is at 52 and DeSantis is at 21.
So to expect an announcement bump to change the fundamentals of what is going on here in this race is naive and a little bit ridiculous.
It's just not a little bit.
It's wholly ridiculous to me.
There's a fundamental problem that anyone not named Trump has in this race.
And they're not doing anything to address it.
In fact, they're doubling down.
So, even in his own state, you know, where we thought he did so well in South Florida, well, he's getting killed in those districts in South Florida.
Trump is crushing him.
He's leading with Hispanics, 30-points, Hispanic Republicans who are going to vote in the primary.
Why is that?
Nobody is stopping to say why.
They're just continuing with these ridiculous arguments.
If I get him one-on-one, I can beat him.
Or he's unelectable in a general election.
You're never going to convince the Republican primary voter that Donald Trump is unelectable.
Not a majority of them.
You may convince 15 to 25 percent, but not a majority.
And they already saw this man win a general election, and most of them believe that something happened in 20 that prevented him from winning that one.
So it's just an argument to a very small subset of the Republican primary vote.
And it's honestly a little bit shocking to me, you know, that there aren't more people who have put a lot more thought in how to really beat Donald Trump because this is the same old, same old gentleman.
I'm not seeing anything different here.
Ron DeSantis' camp is acting like what I saw in 2016 and 15.
It's not different.
So until it is, he's going to be mired in this, you know, 18 to 22% rate internationally.
Northface, if I know, I never want to see another Northface.
This is one of the most, do we have this advertisement?
We'll get it.
It's so despicable.
I mean, I know you might say, Charlie, the list of companies, I can't keep track of all of them.
That's why I tell you guys, go to publicsq.com, download the app.
It can be your compass can help you navigate all this.
Okay, Rich Barris, I know we're talking about something different here and something separate.
Rich, I want to get your reaction, though.
From what I've been talking to donors and chatter, Tim Scott, it seems, actually is getting some of the billionaire class interest more so than Ron DeSantis this week.
Rich, are you seeing that as well?
And what are we supposed to make of that?
I am, actually.
There have been a couple candidates waiting in the wind in case Ron DeSantis didn't work out.
And somebody like Tim Scott, he's getting a lot of help from the CEO of Oracle, former chief of Oracle.
He may still be.
Also, you know, his position on the committee has given him a lot of big network to a lot of Wall Street guys and a lot of Wall Street donors.
So they like him.
They think he's articulate.
And he is articulate.
With the exception of his mic going out, which wasn't good, with the exception of that happening during his announcement speech, he was very good.
And that's what I would have expected from Tim Scott.
Super nice guy.
The problem is, guys, and getting back to some of the polling that we were just talking about in the prior segment, even in these areas, we asked people, really, what kind of brand of Republicanism are you identifying with this year?
What are you looking for?
Charlie, last time we spoke, we were talking about Vivik's increased support in national polls.
And you said that the movement has changed so much over 10 years.
I mean, it's just so different now.
There's a ceiling for somebody like Tim Scott, not with the donors, but with the voters.
And the bottom line is, even in these areas, they don't choose traditional Republicanism like they choose America first Republicanism.
And we'll patently ask them right out, what do you identify as?
And it's two to one.
So the lane is just so small.
And Tim Scott is going to have to try to share that lane with Ron DeSantis, with Nikki Haley.
Ron DeSantis now is like firmly putting himself in that lane with some of these comments he's making, the culture of losing, right?
So I do think, though, that Tim Scott probably has the potential just from, I have the same calls with donors that you do.
They like him and they're going to fund him.
So Nikki Haley isn't as articulate.
And I think there has always been in conversations with them, there has always been something.
He's a very likable guy.
If you meet him in person, folks, he really is.
He's a very likable guy, and they just feel like he's got more charisma than some of these other non-Trump candidates.
Hey, Rich, so I want to make sure I understand the logic here, right?
It's, you know, is the calculus that Trump is going to lock down that, I guess, more conservative, as Joe Biden calls it, the MAGA, the MAGA Republican base, that quadrant of the party or that half of the party, is the calculus that if you kind of signal more of an establishment tone, if you signal, you know, maybe they call it polish or, you know, Trumpism without the drama, whatever that, whatever that lane is, is the calculus that there's 51%,
is there enough to win a Republican primary if you're going kind of in that lane, if you will?
I have heard directly from people around Haley, Scott, and DeSantis that a majority of Republicans don't want America first and want to move on from America first.
They believe that.
And to me, I don't know how you could.
I mean, we're looking at the polling here now, and it's even if you don't ask people what they identify as, gentlemen, Trump is over 50%.
The last time I checked, the definition of a majority was 50 plus one, right?
So it doesn't make any sense.
Some of the things that these non-Trump candidates are running on, these ideas, the logic, is just flawed.
And I think they've grappled, you know, grabbed onto it.
They really thought the environment after the midterms was going to hold.
But what they didn't realize is that even at his lowest point, 43%, it was incredibly difficult to prevent him from getting another seven with all of those undecideds and all of those other candidates.
When you ask people who their second choice was, it was still Donald Trump.
It wasn't like these, all of these people were anti-Trump and nobody, you know, anyone but Trump, they weren't.
That was wrong.
That logic was wrong.
And I don't know if they're relying on some bad pollsters.
I mean, we've seen some real doocies that shouldn't even be public.
They're just ridiculous.
I don't know what informed them of this, but clearly it's not talking to the average vote.
Rich Barris from People's Pundit.
Big data poll does a great job, Rich.
We'll have you back on soon.
Thanks so much.
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 on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
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