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July 3, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
29:29
Ask Charlie Anything 150: What's the Evidence? Why is ESPN Dying? Good Movies to Watch?

Charlie takes the questions you email him at Freedom@CharlieKirk.com including:   What, precisely, is the actual evidence against Joe and Hunter Biden? Is the risk of nuclear war over Ukraine still rising? What does Charlie make of the mass layoffs at ESPN? What are Charlie's favorite movies?Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Biden, Ukraine, and Democracy 00:13:37
Hey everybody, happy Monday Ask Me Anything episode.
It is the end of Pride Month.
How did we do?
We take listener questions.
You guys should email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
We recap some Supreme Court decisions.
We talk about New York City's mayor, the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, and more.
Email us freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to our podcast.
Get your tickets to the Turning Point Action Conference at tpaction.com.
That is tpaction.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.
We have lots of questions here.
I want to get to this one.
This one is from Mike in Alabama.
Charlie, I'm trying to track all this Biden stuff.
It's hard for me to even keep it straight.
Can you play, can you walk us through the evidence against Joe Biden and tell us what is the latest?
Yes, that is a great question.
Okay, there is literally so much going on.
And by the way, I have some inside information to share with you.
I can't tell you who it came from.
The House of Representatives is going to get even more aggressive.
And believe it or not, there are some new revelations that are still going to come out that are even worse for the Biden family.
It is not over.
There's some big stuff coming out.
Okay, so there are several aspects of this.
The first of which is just Hunter Biden's outright criminality operating as a proxy for his father, Joe Biden.
We see this in multiple ways.
So let's use one example.
Peter Schweitzer, who's been excellent on this, he has claimed for a while that Joe Biden was using a secret cell phone to be able to do this business.
Joe Biden claimed that he had nothing to do with Hunter Biden's business dealings.
Of course he did.
You're trying to tell Hunter Biden, who's a crackhead, was able to get millions of dollars for no reason whatsoever with no services rendered without his father being involved.
He was selling out American foreign policy, American policy decisions to enrich his own family.
It's treason.
So let's play cut four of Peter Schweitzer.
Breaking news on a cell phone that Joe Biden was using.
Tell us about that.
It's interesting.
What is the line of communications between Hunter Biden and his business partners and Joe Biden when he's vice president of the United States?
It's not the government phone.
It's not Joe Biden's personal phone.
We know from the laptop that Hunter Biden's business paid for a private phone line that Joe Biden used while he was vice president.
It was from ATT.
It was $300 a month.
It was a global phone where you could access somebody anywhere around the world.
And that may be the phone, for example, that the Ukrainian, the barisma executive, might have used in this allegation that he talked to Joe Biden in recorded conversations.
So Joe Biden is implicated here.
So there's two sides of this.
The first side is the actual crimes that they committed with wire transfers and selling out the country.
The second side of this is the cover-up of the investigation into their crimes.
So if I were to simplify this for anybody listening, there's the crimes they committed and then the crimes they committed to cover up the crimes they committed.
Those are the two buckets.
Now, when I say the crimes they committed, there's a lot of crimes that they committed.
Lying to federal investigators, probably destroying evidence, Foreign Registration Act violations.
Remember, the cover-up is what brought down Nixon.
But the Bidens are not dumb.
They knew they had to cover up because, unlike with Watergate and Nixon, the actual crime here is not worse than the cover-up, is worse than the cover-up.
That they were willing to be accused of a cover-up because the crime is actually worse than the cover-up.
When sometimes in D.C., the cover-up is worse than the crime.
Not in this case.
They were willing to risk being caught covering up.
And this should be getting mainstream coverage.
For those of you that might be confused on the Biden stuff, it's all around this guy, Gary Shapley.
How many whistleblowers do we need?
We have Tony Bobielinski.
We have Gary Shapley.
Hopefully soon we'll have Devin Archer.
So we have a ton of tape here on Gary Shapley that I'm going to go through.
He's a lead investigator.
He still works for the IRS in the Hunter Biden case.
And he said he uncovered conduct that warranted more serious charges.
I want to play all these pieces of tape.
How is this not the number one news story?
You're the whistleblower that works for the Internal Revenue Service that says somebody was coming in and telling us that we could not do our job.
Let's play cut 39.
If this was any other person, they likely would have already served their sentence.
Gary Shapley was a lead IRS supervisory agent in Operation Sportsman, the investigation into Hunter Biden.
Shapley said he uncovered conduct that warranted more serious charges.
There were personal expenses that were taken as business expenses.
Prostitutes, sex club memberships, hotel rooms for purported drug dealers.
How much did Hunter Biden owe in taxes?
So from 2014 to 2019, it was $2.2 million.
$2.2 million.
He gets a plea deal.
Well, let's see if the judge accepts it.
Play cut 40.
Shapley, who is still working for the IRS, told us that even before President Biden took office, he was directed to avoid leads involving Hunter's father.
There were certain investigative steps that we weren't allowed to take that could have led us to President Biden.
And you wanted to take them.
We needed to take them.
And you weren't allowed to take them.
That's correct.
Not allowed to take them.
So just again, there's the crimes and then there's the covering up of the crime.
Somebody is orchestrating this.
Now, remember, this was CBS.
This was not Newsmax or Fox News.
This is CBS that is pressing this.
Makes you wonder.
He's blocked from pursuing leads.
So Gary Shapley, play cut 65, says, we were not even allowed to ask about the big guy.
It is clear what is going on.
This could bring down Joe Biden.
And I don't even know if that's a good thing.
I'll be honest.
Some people say, oh, it's a great thing.
Be careful what you wish for because you might get a much better candidate than Joe Biden.
But justice is a good in and of itself.
It's the messiest of the virtues, according to Aristotle, but it's important.
Play cut 65.
As far as the president's involvement in that?
So that's kind of the crux of one of the issues here: we weren't allowed to ask questions about dad.
We weren't allowed to ask about the big guy.
We weren't allowed to include certain names and document requests and search warrants.
So, you know, we were precluded from following that line of questioning.
We weren't allowed to ask about the big guy.
That's a little bit of a wink and a nod to Tony Bobulinsky.
Remember when Tony Bobielinski was called the conspiracy theorist, smeared and slandered?
Because Tony Bobielinski, who did business with the Bidens, said very clearly that 10% was set aside for the big guy.
That whistleblower used the term big guy.
The fact that CBS did this is pretty amazing.
It means that the cone of silence is finally breaking.
It's an earthquake behind the scenes that CBS did this.
An earthquake.
It's play cut 66.
Based on all of the financial records that we did find, they've been analyzed.
And it was around 8.3 million he received from who?
They came from China, from CEFC, came from Ukraine, and from Romania.
I mean, to this day, there's still around $400,000 of unreported income from Burisma in 2014.
And then the statute of limitations then expires in November or December of 2022.
So those years are gone.
Democrats are always able to find ways to extend the statute of limitations against people they don't like.
And they knew what they were doing.
They were running out the clock.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars of unreported income from Burisma.
All roads truly do lead to Ukraine, don't they?
It's amazing, isn't it?
How we are funding a proxy war in Eastern Europe to then have hundreds of billions of dollars sent to Ukraine.
And our own president's family has personally benefited in millions of dollars from that very same country.
Play cut 67, the most serious felony charges were left off the table.
Play cut 67.
Is there criminal implications in what you were investigating when it comes to Hunter Biden?
Oh, absolutely.
And the most substantive felony charges were left off the table.
Which would have been what?
Which would have been evasion for 14, false return for 18 and 2019.
And this is just the tax stuff, by the way.
This doesn't count the foreign agent representation stuff they got Michael Flynn on.
This doesn't count all these kind of foreign money flows.
It doesn't count unreported foreign income.
It doesn't count bribery.
No, that's just there.
So there's a shakedown part of this, which you could find plenty of things in the criminal code.
So hopefully that answers your question.
Okay, let's get to another question here.
Several questions.
Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
Charlie, did you see the news about Poland asking the United States for nuclear weapons in response to Russia putting weapons in Belarus?
Dwight from Carson City, Nevada.
Or is it Nevada?
Andrew will tell me.
So look, yes, I did see this, and it's some breaking news.
This is going in a terrible direction.
Okay?
What is happening in Eastern Europe is quickly bringing the entire Western world in a seemingly tragic direction.
Why what happens in Seattle needs to be tied into what is happening in a border dispute in Eastern Ukraine is a mystery to me.
But the amount of money that we are spending is nearly unlimited, $200 billion.
And I hate to say we were right, but we were right.
We were right when we said that what's going to happen in Ukraine is there's no limitations on this.
The regime does not know how to stop once they begin.
And the great defender, that Churchill of our time, the man that we're supposed to salute and teach our children about, have big posters, big posters of him looking into the distance, Zelensky, has now said we're not going to have elections because we're at war.
Playcut 47.
Will there be elections in Ukraine next year?
This is a global question.
And if we win, then they will.
It means there will not be a military time, there will not be a war.
The elections must be passed during a peaceful time, when there is no war, according to the legislation.
And that's why it's so true.
Now, look, I could have just played a tape there, and they could have said that they were going to send nuclear bombs and destroy Iran, and you wouldn't have known what they just said, because I couldn't understand a word of that.
However, what was just said there is that, look, we're at war.
We're not going to have elections.
I thought democracy dies in darkness.
Where are all the defenders of democracy?
He's supposed to be this beautiful example, this shining example of representative government.
We just get rid of all elections.
More aid is being sent to Ukraine.
Play cut 44.
Today, the Biden-Harris administration is announcing a new security assistance package for Ukraine as we continue to stand with the people of Ukraine as they defend themselves from Russia's brutal invasion.
This package includes key capabilities that will support Ukraine's counteroffensive operations, such as mine-clearing equipment, armored vehicles, and artillery rounds.
Who is that awful?
Who is that woman?
And why is she wearing a dress with dragons?
What is that all about?
Really strange.
Remember how the left has told us and people on the right, it's very important that Ukraine's democracy prevails, right?
They're a dictatorship.
We've said two thugs fighting each other.
Play cut 46.
President has said many times we're focused on what we can do to support Ukraine's effort to fight for their democracy.
Democracy must prevail.
The Ukrainian people are fighting the fight for their democracy and in doing so, for ours as well.
Assisting and helping Ukraine win this fight for democracy and freedom.
And of course, Ukrainian President Zelensky understands that what's at stake in Ukraine is bigger than just his nation.
It is literally a battle for freedom and democracy themselves.
They are showing the world what an existential fight for democracy looks like.
Existential fight for democracy, but no elections.
That's just too much of a distraction.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
ESPN's Political Turn 00:14:55
Just when you thought the government would stop trying to take over health care, Senator Bernie Sanders, that socialist Marxist communist, is pushing something that is no good.
I need your attention right now.
I'm urgently asking you to support the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste to stop the Senate from passing the Sanders Bill S1339.
It would raise the price of prescription drugs by making it harder for pharmacy benefit managers to continue to save an average of $1,000 per year for 275 million Americans just like you.
Bernie Sanders, he is a sneaky commie.
I'll tell you what.
He will not lower prescription drug prices despite what the bill says.
It will create a socialist healthcare system here in America.
I've read the bill.
It's dangerous.
You've got to stop it.
You have to sign lowermydrugprices.com.
I'm telling you, I'm involved in this.
You've got to get into the game.
Add your name to thousands who are standing up and saying you don't want more government interference in healthcare, but you must hurry.
The Sanders bill will come up for a vote in only a few weeks.
Go to lowermydrugprices.com.
All of us together must oppose the Marxist Bernie Sanders lowermydrugprices.com.
You know, I've been talking about this for a while, but it's really, it's a perfect, perfect day to focus on this.
You know what my morning routine used to be when I was in fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, especially in the summer?
Maybe Brian is similar.
I used to wake up and watch Sports Center.
I used to wake up before school, before summer camp, and watch Sports Center.
Sports Center was a great show.
And mind you, I thought sports was just, they were objectively easier to watch and better 15 years ago, 20 years ago.
I still watch college football.
I think college football is losing its shine and its appeal in some way, but it's still excellent.
Here's a question that triggers this, by the way.
Charlie, have you seen the layoffs happening at ESPN, Rich from South Dakota, Jeff Van Gundy, Jalen Rose, they laid off?
Are they going to have a network after this?
Susie Colbert and Scott, are you kidding?
Not Scott Van Pelt, no way.
No, but what's this other guy here?
Todd McShea.
He's just excellent.
He's great.
When did Disney buy ESPN?
I think that's the first, I think it was right around like 2008, 2009.
I could be wrong.
ESPN was the gold standard for sports entertainment.
And honestly, they did a fabulous job for years.
It was entertaining.
It was humorous.
It was light.
It was engaging.
And now ESPN is collapsing.
The ESPN layoffs are going viral.
That's right.
ESPN is cutting 20 on-air stars.
20 on-air stars.
Oh, I guess Disney bought them in 19, wow, 1995.
Okay, so I stand correct.
It's my whole life, basically.
ESPN is cutting 20 on-air stars.
Jeff Van Gundy, Max Kellerman, Kayshawn Johnson, poor guy.
What's a former wide receiver got to do to make a living around here?
Is he super woke?
Yeah.
Go work for him SNBC.
Did they fire that NBA commentator guy who's unbelievably woke?
You know what I'm talking about?
Who's a total buster?
Kendrick Perkins, yeah.
He's probably promoted.
He's awful, Kendrick Perkins.
He's a buster.
Did he ever?
I think he won with the Celtics once, didn't he?
Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.
I think he was on that team.
Anyway, I like Jeff Van Gundy.
I thought he was a good coach.
20 on-air stars in a dramatic round of cutoffs.
Nobody is safe at ESPN.
And what I'm told is that more layoffs might be coming.
So what is driving this at ESPN?
The answer is ESPN has gone woke.
And it's just, they're not as boundary pushing or as funny or as interesting as they used to be.
Do you remember the old commercials?
This is Sports Center?
We have a couple I sent to Ryan.
I know if Ryan is cutting them up.
I know Andrew just said, wow, Max Kellerman.
I mean, these are top-level talents.
Todd McShea, Todd McShea worked his tail off.
That is not, he was very well sourced throughout the league.
And this is happening because ESPN decided to go a political route.
Now, these people will not acknowledge it.
Jeff Van Gundy, Jalen Rose.
These people will not admit or acknowledge that this is happening because that ESPN has decided to engage in politics.
All right, let's play just a little nostalgia here for all of you at home.
Let's play whatever tape this is.
I never got tired.
So my dad started calling me AD for all day and he's stuck with me ever since.
I like that.
AD all day.
Yeah.
So what's your nickname around here?
Me?
Yeah.
I don't really have a nickname.
Pretty much just calling me Scott.
Oh, Dave, what's up?
Hey, Bedwinter.
Guys are always clowning, you know.
Bedwinner.
Told you that in confidence.
Johnny.
Go ahead and get this facts out.
All right.
That's Adrian Peterson when he was once the best player in the NFL and then he tore his ACL.
Then he went to Oklahoma, if I remember correctly.
He was actually a really good guy.
That's just one of many.
And that was part of the This Is Sports Center kind of commercial genre.
ESPN can't rely on highlights anymore.
So then they lost those to YouTube.
So they need to then have really good content.
Instead, they went for politics.
And they could have done real sports discussion and real journalism.
Instead, it was just lectures about racism from Jameel Hill.
By the way, get some tape here of that.
Let's play another piece of tape of ESPN, Play Cut 116.
Stay with me, Chad.
Touchdown, Chad Johnson.
He's going to one of these.
If I did that in public, I'd find myself next.
That's the ESPN guys trying to give Chad Ocho Cinko recommendations for touchdown celebrations.
And ESPN keeps on promoting to people like Jamil Hill.
Jameel Hill opens up about leading ESPN's conservative culture after her controversial Trump tweet.
More recently, Jameel Hill ousted from Spotify after demanding a $100 million contract.
Yeah.
Out of a job again.
Sounds like a real winner over there.
You know, I hate to say this.
ESPN was never the same post-Suert Scott.
He was really special.
He was funny.
He was unique.
Passed away in 2015.
He was really, really great.
One of the best voices there.
Passed away in 2015.
Anyway, this is personal for me because, and look, I'm not a leftist, obviously.
I don't like to see institutions collapse.
I don't cheer for their demise.
I like to see things passed down.
I like to see things preserved, conserved.
And the way sports were 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I deeply and sincerely miss.
I do not enjoy watching the National Football League and having end racism on the bottom of every helmet.
I watch less football because of it.
In fact, sometimes I'm just like, it's not worth it.
I'll watch the playoffs.
I'll watch a game here or there.
College, I still watch, as I say.
I don't watch any baseball.
I think I watched one NBA basketball game.
I don't watch any hockey.
And I would if these sports, if I felt as if these leagues were in harmony with my values, NHL, they have these gay jerseys all over the place.
I think they said they're not doing that again.
Too late.
And so this is not just isolated to ESPN.
It's all of Disney.
And let's go through the list.
Disney's last eight films have lost the disgraced American brand over $900 million.
Strange World, never heard of it, lost $197 million and included a homosexual romance.
Lightyear lost $106 million and showed lesbians kissing.
Elemental features the company's first non-binary character and had the worst opening weekend in company history.
Now Disney is looking to cut $5.5 billion in expenses worldwide and is even firing talent at subsidiary ESPN.
Why is this happening?
So look, if you're the CEO of Disney, is it still Bob Iger?
I think it is because he went back.
He went anywhere back.
I think Iger's back.
So is Bob Iger a gay activist?
No.
Is he sympathetic to the gay agenda?
Yes.
But is he a gay activist?
No.
But Bob Iger is sitting in his office at Disney and he has to make decisions.
And somebody in his office warns him, Mr. Iger, if you push back on our grooming content, you're going to have a revolt of the homosexuals.
And that's the way this works: is that the LGBTQ groups, they take over these companies and they're loud and they're obnoxious and they're demanding and they are constantly requiring pandering, constantly requiring pandering.
I mean, you just have to keep on feeding that beast.
So Bob Iger would rather lay off Jeff Van Gundy and Todd McShea, who I think is excellent, than have to make the actual tough decisions and tell the gay mob, hey, you guys have cost us $900 million.
But here's another thing.
Bob Iger is reminded of something else too.
Who's going to design your movies?
It is not an overestimate to say that probably between 20 to 30 percent of Disney's graphic designers, writers, people in the motion arts are in the LGBTQ group and/or hyper-sympathetic of that.
I think that's probably fair.
And so if they get ticked off, their whole business model gets upset.
They are holding the entire profitability and the ability for Disney to turn into a serious business hostage unless you make all this.
We demand more lesbian kissing scenes.
And Bob Iger is probably like, geez, guys.
Like, can we run a business?
And his team is like, well, Mr. Iger, just so you know, if you are not 100% doing this, this, this, this, and this, then you're going to have a walkout.
And remember when they actually did that with Ron DeSantis?
Do you remember that?
When Ron DeSantis went after Disney and he deserves credit for what he did with Disney?
And there was all that walkout and all this.
Don't say gay.
You remember that?
When you get some of those films, some of the most fragile, turned tyrannical groups of activists in the country and the world are the LGBTQ employees.
They are vicious.
And they are holding the entire Disney conglomerate hostage.
Somebody says, Charlie, since you talk about how bad Hollywood is, what are some movies you do like, Anna, from Trenton, New Jersey?
It's actually right near Trenton, New Jersey recently.
I went to go see President Trump.
What movies do I like?
Well, I do love Lord of the Rings.
Lord of the Rings is an excellent film.
And I love all things Tolkien.
My favorite all-time movie, though, that I could just watch over and over again is Gladiator.
Love Gladiator.
It is an excellent film.
I think Russell Crowe does a terrific job.
Braveheart with Mel Gibson is a really, really good movie.
Trying to think what other movies I really enjoy.
Oh, Ridley Scott has a Napoleon movie coming out soon.
Might be good.
Probably won't be.
Probably some sort of corrupt wrinkle.
Yeah, look, I love movies.
I've seen hundreds, probably thousands of movies, grew up watching a lot of movies.
My dad collects movies, actually, so I've seen my fair share.
I think movies are just terrific.
I don't really watch many of them anymore because they've all really kind of gone fake and gay.
And it's just so, you know, out of out of the out of the mainstream.
But if you were to kind of go through some of the other movies, I'm just trying to jog my memory here.
Oh, yeah, of course.
The Godfather is one of my favorite movies.
I'm just looking kind of here.
Godfather is an excellent film.
And we have an obligation to be serious about our cultural consumption.
We are shaped by what we watch.
And by the way, you must understand the core canon of which your entire society is based on.
If we watch trash, we get trashier.
If we watch beautiful things, we have a chance to go to higher heights and to greater heights, I should say.
Another really great movie that I think is underrated is I do like the Cohen brothers.
They're excellent.
Trying to think what No Country for Old Men with Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin is an excellent film.
Do you know what makes that movie unique?
No music.
Yeah, that's right.
Brian knows it.
There is no music in No Country for Old Men.
We need fiction that elevates us, that makes us think about things bigger than ourselves.
We need to dive into the deeper things of heroes that deal with the complexities that we can resonate with.
Remember, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars are all the three same story, just repackaged.
Orphan grows up in a desolate place in a disadvantaged situation, raised by their uncle, not sure who raised that, who the actual biological father is or mother is, comes to age and goes on a journey away from that place of innocence, whether it be Tatooine or The Shire or under a Stairway and goes on a hero's journey, assembles a team of a couple people,
whether it be Hermoine or Hans Solo or Bill Bo Baggins, fights evil, but realizes the true evil is themselves.
So it becomes an inward fight, which is the true story of the Bible.
And you have to conquer your own nature.
What does Harry Potter have to do?
He realizes that it's his own scar, it's his own internal struggle that is the great struggle.
What does Frodo Baggins have to end up realizing that it is the ring, his temptation to want to put on the ring, that is the great struggle he has to overcome at the end?
What does Luke Skywalker have to overcome?
The temptation to go to the dark side.
Same story, hero's journey repackaged multiple times.
Conquering Your Inner Temptation 00:00:55
And it should be.
It resonates with us for a reason.
What is the hero's journey of the left?
You grow up an orphan and you become a trans activist and get your intimate parts chopped off and you stay on Lupron and antidepressants.
End of story.
Man grows up in successful, loving society, cuts off his parts, ruins the country, and kills himself.
We need to be serious about the art we consume.
We need better movies.
We need better stories.
And it's hard to see the trash that we are publishing out there right now.
It makes me miss the 80s and the 90s.
We were a better country and we can get it back.
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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