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June 16, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
32:32
8 Years Ago Today, Everything Changed
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Eight Years Ago Everything Changed 00:10:30
Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk Show.
Eight years ago today, everything changed.
Donald Trump went down the escalator and our lives were never the same.
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I'd say most people didn't take it seriously.
It was considered a joke.
It quickly turned into an internet meme.
There's no way this guy is serious talking like this.
This is just for him to sell more apartment buildings.
And this is a branding exercise.
Where were you?
Where were you when you first heard the news?
Not 9-11, not even for some of you, Pearl Harbor, not the Kennedy assassination.
Now, where were you when Donald Trump went down the golden escalator?
I think it's without a doubt one of the most top 30, top 40, top 50 significant moments in American political history, easily.
Where were you?
Were you sitting at home kind of minding your own business, maybe listening to Rush?
And all of a sudden you saw this, you said, oh, this is interesting.
Were you in the car?
Were you at work?
It started as a joke.
Circles I was running at the time certainly didn't take it very seriously.
Remember, it was supposed to be Jeb Bush, who's going to be the nominee.
Donald Trump also announced right next to Jeb Bush intentionally.
Or Marco Rubio, or maybe Ted Cruz, Scott Walker.
Who is this Trump guy?
Who does he think he is running for president?
This is just a branding thing.
He's just there to try to boost his name ID.
Egomaniac, whatever.
Let's not take him seriously.
He went down the golden escalator, and that was eight years ago to the day today.
And everything changed.
Everything changed.
Eight years ago, Donald Trump went down that escalator and gave a 43-minute speech that was noticeably different at the time than almost any other political speech that we heard.
Of course, it was Trump who had built-up name ID, rap songs, apprentice, best-selling author, art of the deal, branded buildings, the darling of New York.
If you went to somebody in Missouri or Montana, you said, hey, name me an American billionaire, they would almost certainly say Donald Trump.
You thought of rich, American, successful, little braggadocia, a little bit shoot from the hip, American spirit.
Donald Trump, Oprah loved him.
He was the darling of the media for American entrepreneurial capitalism, building, build big buildings and golf courses and casinos and football teams and airlines and Trump stakes and all this.
He just was relentless.
He was that life force of energy.
And he knew how to use the media.
Did it for years.
But then all of a sudden, Donald Trump goes down the escalator and he didn't run this by people.
He didn't call Chuck U. Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.
He didn't call McConnell and say, hey, just so you know, I'm thinking of doing this.
He didn't call a bunch of donors and say, hey, you know, I need to have this launch and I'd like to have you there and you guys can support me.
He didn't get permission.
He just woke up one day and said, hey, that atrium in Trump Tower, just go put a little thing there.
It says, Trump, make America great again.
And I'm going to go make an announcement.
Yes, sir, Mr. Trump.
Yes, sir.
Puts his family together.
Hey, guys, by the way, I'm running for president.
And they said, oh, really?
He just winged it.
Every other politician, they have consulting fees, perfectly tailored and manicured visuals, inviting every single friend, babysitter, client, and cousin to their announcement address.
Donald Trump was just like, eh, I've basically done everything else.
Traveled the world, best-selling author, number one TV show.
Country's going to hell.
Let's see what we got.
And eight years ago, Donald Trump went down that escalator.
And he committed the greatest of all crimes.
It didn't sink in immediately when he did it.
The American flags flanked the brightest red, candy, red tie you could imagine.
The alpha male mannerisms, not talking like a politician, engaging with the audience.
His beautiful family flanked around him.
It's like right out of central casting.
But he committed a serious crime.
No, he didn't take a bunch of money from China or Burisma.
He didn't smash a bunch of cell phones or lie to the FBI.
No, he committed a crime that Washington, D.C. does not think is very funny.
And then he did it again.
And then he did it again.
And then he made a whole campaign around it.
His crime was noticing.
Donald Trump said out loud, repeatedly, and sometimes rudely, that the country was going to hell.
He said out loud that the rich were getting infinitely richer and screwing the American middle class.
He said out loud that these foreign wars are pointless, aimless, stupid.
He said out loud that we have millions of people waltzing into our country.
He asked the question: why are we in NATO again?
Is this a good deal for us?
He noticed that China was taking over the world and our leaders were complicit.
His crime was noticing the outright fraud, the plunder that the cartel of Washington, D.C. was engaged in.
You see that picture there of Donald Trump at the presidency.
People said, there's no way this is going to resonate.
There is no way.
That's what all the experts said.
Quite honestly, at the time, being young and naive, I said, this is not going to go anywhere.
I was only three years into this thing.
I thought that we were still in a policy debate.
Oh, yeah, high taxes, low taxes, balance the budget, reform Social Security.
Here's Donald Trump all of a sudden going after the three third rails of politics.
That's right, the three third rails.
And he did them all at once.
Our trade deals are awful.
Our wars are stupid.
And our borders are wide open.
Whoa.
One, two, three.
You see, when you run for president, you're supposed to do platitudes.
I believe America's best days are ahead.
As Ronald Reagan would say, freedom is no more than one generation away from extinction.
And our country has been through a lot, but I believe if we yearn to our better angels, we can overcome these divides.
And I disagree with President Obama and what he's doing to the economy.
And I think that behind our campaign, we can ignite a new American future.
He didn't do any of that stuff.
There are no consultants.
There is no poll testing stuff.
Trump, with his instinct, says, Yeah, this country's not being run well.
I'm a politician.
Let's lean in and let's fix it.
Play Cut 101.
We need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again.
We can do that.
And I will tell you, I love my life.
I have a wonderful family.
They're saying, Dad, you're going to do something that's going to be so tough.
You know, all of my life, I've heard that a truly successful person, a really, really successful person, and even modestly successful, cannot run for public office.
Just can't happen.
And yet, that's the kind of mindset that you need to make this country great again.
Eight years ago, he looked around.
He's like, this is not going well.
And he is right.
Eight years ago, Donald Trump was not under federal indictment.
Donald Trump was not an impeached president.
Donald Trump had all the contracts with corporate America.
Donald Trump was the darling of the show.
Donald Trump was well accepted by Oprah.
Before he went down that escalator, he had a good life, an easy life, a simple life.
Eight years later, Donald Trump's comfort is gone.
He's under multiple indictments in the town, one in the town that he built, one by the federal government.
He's been a twice impeached president, spied on by the federal Bureau of Investigation.
Eight years ago, he decided to do something for you.
The forgotten man and woman of this country, the ordinary person.
And he's paid a big price for it.
But I think we're barely just touching on the significance of how everything changed eight years ago when Donald Trump went down that golden escalator.
Trump Challenges The Entire Orthodoxy 00:04:53
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The most amazing thing is there is no plan.
There is no committee, no poll testing.
The discussion was all about Ted Cruz, Rubio, Rand Paul, Scott Walker.
This guy just comes down the escalator and blows it all up.
He challenged and eventually changed the entire Republican Party.
I could say that when I first got involved in conservative politics, you were not allowed to challenge free trade orthodoxy.
You could not question it.
It's a good thing that we have endless piles of plastic crap coming from China.
It's actually getting us richer.
We're actually getting richer.
You don't know it, but we're actually getting really rich.
And, oh, okay, go read some Austrian economics textbooks, of which I did.
It's a capital account surplus.
But then you drive through Ohio, you're like, well, why are these towns really poor and everyone's on opioids?
No, no, shut up.
Plastic is good for us.
Why is it a good thing that our homes are twice as big, filled with twice as much crap, but we have half as many people living there and we have less kids?
No, it's a good thing because you see, McKinsey has told us that we get richer the more textiles that we have coming from China.
We don't want those jobs anyway.
And those people should just go to learn to code.
We don't need a muscular class.
We don't need carpenters, welders.
We don't need any of that.
Just let the experts and the intellectuals.
And here's Trump, who's part of that elite class, and challenged the entire orthodoxy.
How rotten the Republican Party was on these issues.
Selling out the country to China, selling out our country with bad trade deals, letting whoever wants to come across the southern border.
The border was not a top issue for any Republican until Donald Trump ran for the presidency.
And they immediately called him racist, even though then he did much better in votes than Mitt Romney.
And of course, he was able to brand it better.
We're going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it.
And the wall just got 10 feet taller.
The thought crime that he really paid a price for, according to Tucker Carlson, and I agree completely, is he questioned the war in Iraq.
He said there were no weapons of mass destruction.
We never should have invaded this country.
And people said, finally, somebody in the Republican Party is willing to say that George W. Bush and his entire cabal messed up.
He even said that Bush didn't keep America safe, and he blamed him for having loose immigration policies that led to 9-11.
So this is the additional point, though, as we remember what started eight years ago with him coming down the golden escalator.
As he launched an unexpected tomahawk missile at neoliberalism, he declared war on the Uniparty.
They then declared war on him.
And it didn't happen immediately because he wasn't taken seriously immediately.
Why was it not taken seriously?
Because the smart people and the shadow government thought they've seen this act before.
They're like, oh, yeah, we saw this with Ross Perot, who's talking about that sucking noise with the trade and jobs.
And we're used to this.
He'll end up running third party or something.
We're fine.
We're in control.
They never thought he would take over the Republican Party.
They had no idea how weak the Republican Party actually was.
There were no superdelegates in the Republican Party, unlike the Democrats at the time.
So there was no kind of elite philosopher king ruling class to be able to pick a candidate.
And Donald Trump was smart.
He spoke at a lot of Tea Party rallies.
He saw this kind of grassroots fury that was building up.
And the Tea Party movement by 2015, when he announced, had kind of largely gone away.
So he said, ooh, I'm going to get right back into that energy.
And he smashed the golden calves of our time.
The straw men that we just kept on repeating, that we held up as orthodoxy.
Grassroots Fury Builds Up 00:02:24
Plastic makes us wealthier.
It's a good thing that people are on opioids.
And he went right after them.
And he said, that is a lie.
One of the criticisms that people level against Donald Trump is how he has divided America, how he's this divisive guy.
Donald Trump did not divide America.
He simply observed the hidden fault lines that were already there.
He did not divide America.
He simply exposed the divide.
And then he mentioned it.
He ripped the veil off and said, your plutocrats are getting rich while you get poor.
We're invading countries while we're getting invaded.
And this is dumb.
And that was his great crime.
And he's paying the price for it even today.
But it started eight years ago.
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I remember where I was eight years ago.
We were actually hosting our Young Women's Leadership Summit.
That's right.
Our first ever Young Women's Leadership Summit.
Eight years ago, we had like 41 attendees.
And it was received kind of as a joke.
Who is this guy?
What does he think he's doing?
Re-Engineer Your Body's NADH 00:08:51
You see, what Donald Trump also did is he changed the body politic of the GOP.
East Palestine, Ohio, all of a sudden became a Republican stronghold.
The muscular class had a voice.
Democrats used to own that muscular class.
And he spoke in a way that they could resonate and understand, especially on the issues that there was more bipartisanship than ever before.
That there was agreement that eroding the middle class was a good thing, as it was vanishing.
Remember, Ross Perot tried this.
It's nothing new to have.
Pap Buchanan tried this.
But Donald Trump was unique.
He was built for a perfect time, obviously with ubiquitous name ID, an ability to command attention.
And he took everybody by surprise.
Everybody.
Because the more they platformed him, they used to cover MAGA rallies.
They used to have him in interviews.
His support grew and grew and grew.
And they did not eventually end up attacking him because he's a liar.
All politicians lie.
No, they attacked him because he was a truth teller and he told the truth in a way that was not pre-approved.
He didn't go through the proper committee process of the Republican Party to say, hell, I have five things I'd like to say.
What do you guys think?
That's what Jeb Bush would do.
Water this down a little bit and use an abstraction here and do that.
Oh, yes.
Yes, sir.
Donald Trump was like, eh, I'm big enough.
I don't need to run up by anybody.
And they underestimated him and they underestimated him.
And so much what you're seeing now, the document case with Donald Trump, is revenge-driven.
Truth is a threat to tyrants.
And yes, of course, Donald Trump did it in a showmanship way with a little bit of bloviation and, you know, just let's say the unique Trump spirit.
But what got down to the essence of it is when he went on media show after media show and he said things you were not allowed to say.
Not as a Republican candidate.
Play cut 100.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States and we are going to make our country great again.
National revival, making it great again, has a not so subtle subtext.
It means it was not as great as it could be at the moment.
You were not allowed to say that.
You see, you're only allowed to run for the president and say everything is wonderful.
Everything is fine.
Just don't ask why eight out of the 10 wealthiest counties in America are around Washington, D.C., don't ask that.
Don't ask the fact that the middle class is just vanishing and people are taking on consumer debt at record levels.
Can't ask that.
You can't ask the question of why is it a good thing that we're allowing hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals to go into our schools.
Can't ask that.
And he changed conservative media.
He changed everything.
And you might hate Donald Trump in this audience.
You might bitterly, some of you do.
I'm getting your emails.
You have to be honest, though.
Eight years ago to this day, the whole ballgame was altered permanently.
Before 2015, the cable news media actually sometimes struggled to come up with new stories to cover.
Remember the Natalie Holloway case?
Cable news would stretch these stories out forever.
Every day on CNN for six years just became a Donald Trump obsession commercial.
Trump broke MSNBC.
You started getting cry-ons like, quote, Trump melts down in angry response to reports he ignored virus warnings.
Or quote, Trump uses task force briefing to try and rewrite history.
Or quote, angry Trump uses propaganda video.
They still can't shut up about him, even if he's under indictment and he's no longer president.
It changed right-wing media too.
Eight years ago, I think that Fox News' influence was probably at its peak as an institution eight years ago.
And we're going to talk about Fox in a second here because there's some very interesting developments with Tucker Carlson that I don't think people are covering enough.
After Donald Trump, Megan Kelly left Fox, Bill O'Reilly left Fox, Greta Van Sustrin left Fox, and then Tucker Carlson was able to explain and communicate to the Trump voter better than anybody else.
And now Tucker is gone.
Right-wing media changed forever.
I mean, how many people in conservative media were once considered to be respectable intellectuals, very popular, and they really don't have anything of a platform anymore?
I think of Jonah Goldberg, who I think wrote a great book, Liberal Fascism, really smart guy.
He's no longer welcome in conservative circles.
He hates Donald Trump so much, he's allowed it to pathologically blur his vision from actually making astute commentary.
And he's not dumb.
Michael Medved, sweet guy, but basically taken off radio because of his Trump hatred.
Ratings went down big time.
And there's example after example after example.
And then, of course, Donald Trump challenged and in one version of events, just one chapter of the events, defeated the administrative state.
And that's where we are now.
What started eight years ago is still ongoing.
And what is exciting, but also unnerving, is we have no idea how this story ends.
We are not looking back at eight years ago and saying, well, that was a good ride.
No, you are in the middle of the story.
I am simply mentioning the metaphorical political Lexington and Concord shot heard around the world moment that started eight years ago today.
And you are living right through the heaviest season of fighting of the people versus the shadow government.
They hate Donald Trump also because he was able to give a voice, activism, and engagement.
The Republican Party does not want anything to do with Donald Trump because of exactly what just happened in North Dakota.
Someone who supported Rana for RNC chair has been removed.
He activated the American grassroots in a representative way that nobody else has.
Two impeachments, two indictments, probably two more coming, two presidents later.
And we're at this again.
This story is continuing and it is unfolding.
But it's important sometimes to take pause, even if you're in the middle of an extremely tumultuous moment, historic moment, confusing moment, where you can't quite get your bearings and your compass is turning as if you're in the Bermuda triangle.
Sometimes it's helpful to stop and be still and say, wow, what have we lived through?
And why is this continuing?
They are not going after Donald Trump because he's rude or because he's insensitive or enough.
No, he did something successfully eight years ago that you're not supposed to do.
And at first, they ignored him.
Then they mocked him.
Then they fought him.
And then he won.
And they will never let that go.
You see, the aims and the ambitions of the permanent DC class, the people that live in those eight wealthiest counties around Washington, D.C., despite producing nothing.
They don't make cars.
They don't make phones.
They launder your $6 trillion of taxpayer money, take slice off the top in inflated defense contracts and sweetheart government deals through lobbyists and communication deals, communication consultant deals, so that they can have hyper-inflated income while you get poor.
Tucker And Fox News Drama 00:05:53
For them, this is a threat to their business model.
For Donald Trump to say that I'm going to go Schedule F and burn it all to the ground, metaphorically go Dresden on the administrative state, is making them say we are not playing games anymore.
Go send Jack Smith, who's willing to indict a ham sandwich.
Go and go full out.
And eight years ago, the crime began.
It's not a crime that you might think.
No, it's a crime against the regime, a crime against the Uniparty for repeatedly, and some people would say obnoxiously, but publicly, calling out the fraud, the deception, the plunder, the stealing, and the deceit of 30 years of Republicans and Democrats selling out America for their own benefit.
And that is something you are not allowed to do.
So, Tucker is in an interesting spot right now.
I just want to say, I was a little skeptical, publicly and privately.
Like, is this Twitter video thing really going to work?
It's been a great idea for him.
He has, he's moving the Overton window.
His audience feels connected to him.
And Fox is in a tough place right now.
Fox's ratings are down.
And they sent Tucker Carlson, Fox News did, a cease and desist letter saying, hey, stop doing this Twitter show thing.
And Tucker keeps on doing his Twitter show.
In fact, the latest video that Tucker made was basically a pulsating middle finger to Fox News.
It was as graphic as one can get to, hey, buddy, sue me.
That's effectively what Tucker did.
You say, why?
Well, if you watch the video, he said, quote, well, the women who run Fox News got really upset.
It was all about this Chiron of wannabe dictator Biden, which, by the way, the person who made the Chiron has since resigned.
Good for the guy who did it because it's exactly right.
And Tucker, in only a way that Tucker can, he's so talented.
He's just an infinitely better writer than I will ever be when he writes these scripts.
And he says he's so true.
It says, why do people get so fired up that the Chiron said, wannabe dictator?
It's because not because it was false.
It's because it was true.
Same thing with Trump ties together, right?
So, but there's this ongoing drama, obviously, between Tucker and Fox News.
And the most important question, of which we do not know the answer, is, will Fox News sue Tucker Carlson?
That is the question.
Will Fox News sue Tucker Carlson and seek an injunction to muzzle him?
That's why my public advice and private advice is Tucker Carlson should run for mayor of Bryant Pond, Maine or something.
And therefore, it's politically protected speech under the First Amendment, regardless.
Now, maybe to run for something else, but I'll leave you guys for speculation on that.
But the point is that if he wants liberated speech to go in front of a judge and say, I'm a political candidate, a private corporation can't, that's a complaint he can win.
But will Fox News do that?
Will Fox News give the green light to their legal division to say that Tucker Carlson is in breach of contract?
He's causing material harm to the company.
And we require an injunction or a sea.
It's even beyond a season dissist.
An injunction would be a court order to stop doing these Twitter videos.
A judge, you know, you could appeal that.
Now, this is really important.
Tucker Carlson is still drawing a salary from Fox News.
He's not getting paid from Twitter, which is an important piece of information.
So he's not monetizing it.
There's no deal.
There's no advertising.
And in his deal, it says you're allowed to use your social media.
So there is some flex in these joints that could be litigated.
But does Fox News really want to get into active litigation with Tucker Carlson?
Even if they get an injunction, which would silence Tucker Carlson, 30 to 60 days later, Tucker Carlson will respond with a countersuit likely and a salvo of discovery requests.
I want to see the emails.
I want to see the conversation.
I want to know why my show was taken off air.
And then that stuff would then be made public.
So what he has done is he has really tried to force the hand of Fox News.
And it's unclear how Fox News will respond.
So far, Fox News has responded with more force, more force, more force.
At every corner, every turn, Fox News is going to the next level of force, take the show off air, try to stifle you with cease and desist.
And now we are at a play, at a moment where if Fox decides to play the ultimate hardball and sues Tucker Carlson, I don't think that will go well for them.
Ratings are down.
Discovery would not go well for them.
So do they just kind of let Tucker continue to post on Twitter at the same time of his old show and disenfranchise their own network?
Tucker has forced the hand.
And it looks like Tucker is willing to sacrifice his salary and any sort of legal comfort he has because a pretty vicious lawsuit could be coming his way, but one that I think he would ultimately win and the most important, which is the court of public opinion.
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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